'Why We Fight'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I don't know about songs, but with poetry, at least, permission is definitely required. I have the only permission that I know of to use Edna St. Vincent Millay's verses and verse fragments as chapter heads (in And Then Put Out The Light). Her estate insisted on reading the MS first, and then gave permission and waived the fee.
I would imagine living lyricists are at least as strict, no?
But I thought Gar was talking titles, not actual lyrics? Aren't titles fair use regardless?
Trixie! Trixie! Trixie!
Aren't titles fair use regardless?
Just titles? That, I really don't know about. I did get permission in advance to mention Fairport Convention in "Matty Groves", but that's a very specific version of the song, linked to a particular band.
Would ASCAP or BMI or whoever have that info at their website?
Would ASCAP or BMI or whoever have that info at their website?
ASCAP, ASSCAP...weird confluence of meanings.
Copyright isn't something I know a lot about, but taking a guess, I think reference to a song by its title is fair use. Like, "I was listening to 'Baby Got Back' on the radio today." But using the artistic creation of someone else to enhance your own-- titling a book or chapter "Baby Got Back", e.g.-- is different. It bleeds from the work that goes into artistic creation.
I have finished You are not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett for bookclub this month. I really enjoyed it and am glad that I chose to read a collection of short stories. We will probably never read another collection as a bookclub book (the last one was "Stranger Things Happen" by Kelly Link) since they are rather hard to discuss as a whole.
This collection deals a lot with loss of various types and peoples' reaction to it. The characters are easy to read, even if their circumstances are not. If that makes sense.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it. It is pretty short, I managed just about 1 story on each commute.
titling a book or chapter "Baby Got Back", e.g.-- is different. It bleeds from the work that goes into artistic creation.
Emma Bull's War of the Oaks uses famous rock song titles for every chapter name, and I duobt she paid royalties on each one of those. Kind of doubt she even got clearances. We could ask Scrappy!
But it's routine to title books from fragments of poetry -- somebody put up a very funny Web page awhile back that spelled out almost the entirety of Yeats's "The Second Coming" in book covers. Even though The Second Coming is still under copyright, people title books "The Widening Gyre" without any permission from the Yeats estate.
All I'm saying is that use of an artistic creation (or for that matter, trademark) and reference to it are different for infringement purposes. Fair use is only a defense whose success depends on the facts of each specific case. And often how infringing something is to a particular copyright holder may simply depend on how litigious he or she is. Yeats may be quite a bit more permissive than the Joyce estate, for instance.