I think it's fine (sometimes) if you attribute it but I've found that a few
people have done my work and not given me credit.  That is not cool.  If you
did that with music, you'd have a hefty fine on your hands. (Actually one
girl did use my music that I wrote for a show and used it with her own
poetry and lyrics over top - I only found out when I was in the audience and
she sheepishly had to say - yes, one of Heather's pieces influenced me.
Hmmmm.  Influence?  I think she meant she took the rhythm and cords from the
song (ie the song) and said they were hers.  As it was for a poem, I said
nothing as i didn't want to get into it but does that make it right?)

I think that if you are going to publish something, online or not, you
should at least try to ask for the author's permission.  What if you thought
the quality of the site was poor?  Or they stood for something that you were
against.  If you are a living poet, most chances are, in this facebook age,
that you can be found.  It's only polite to ask and it is the author's right
to know what is happening to their work.  I'm not talking about schools
where I think anything can be used for education as long as it inspires the
children/ students (though 19 times out of 20 you will be buying an
anthology with the poet's work in it anyway so it's a moot point)  Saying
that I think if you are being paid to perform and you use someone else's
work as your own, then that's not right.  And I question using it if you are
being paid and still attribute it.  It's ok to quote, to be influenced by
but unless it's a tribute night to that poet, it's best to steer clear.

I know on the most part poets want to be heard (and I'm chuffed whenever I
see my work in print) but it is our right to say yes or no to how and when
our work is published or used.  Patrick's filmmaker did it right.  Always
ask first.  It just works out better in the end!

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Corelis [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 14 December 2007 00:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: copyright on the Net

I agree with Ken Wolman and disagree with Wendy Cope.  I've also found
many of my poems on the net (I've heard doing a Google search on
yourself called "ego-surfing," which I guess is a better word than
"self-googling," which sounds like something no one would want to
admit to.)  When I find one of my own poems on some web site I didn't
know about, my invariable reaction is, "My god, someone actually read
it!"  I put on my Roman Elegy web site
(http://www.geocities.com/romanelegy/) a note that my verse
translations there could be reproduced for reasonable non-commercial
use with proper attribution.

Most of Cope's objections seem to me unrealistic.  For instance, she
says that when people tell her that they liked a poem of hers so much
they sent it to friends, she replies that they should have bought
copies of the book and sent them to friends.  Yeah, right.  I can't
imagine people even in one case out of a hundred buying a bunch of
books as an alternative to sending people a poem in email:  the
alternative instead is going to be to just forget about the whole
thing.

She also says that people who do public readings of other people's
poems should get permission first and if necessary pay a royalty.
There are all kinds of problems with this.  Though Cope specifies
she's talking about paid readings, once the principle is established,
it's likely to apply to all public readings, meaning no one could read
their favorite lines of Allen Ginsberg or Kenneth Patchen at the local
coffee-house open mike without getting official permission, and who's
going to
do that?  And could a teacher (who after all is getting paid) read a
poem to a college class (who after all are paying tuition) without
permission?

And has anyone ever actually tried to get permission to reproduce a
poem?  It's vastly easier said than done.  First you have to figure
out if the poem is under copyright in your particular country -- this
can differ significantly between, for instance, the U.S. and
Australia.  Then you have to figure who to write for permission.  If
you know the author is alive and can find an address for them, you can
write the author, who may reply in a week or a month or sixth months
or not at all, and the answer may be yes or no or something less clear
cut.  And if you don't have the author's address, or if the author has
joined that Great Creative Writing Workshop In The Sky, you have to
contact the publisher (if it's still in business,) addressing your
letter only to the publisher in general, or hopefully trying
"Permissions Department", and hoping it gets to someone who will read
it and will be able to answer it, and even if you get that far, that
person may reply in a week or a month or sixth months or not at all,
and the answer may be yes or no or something less clear cut.  And if
the author's not around and the publisher is out of business, what do
you do then?  The whole thing is unworkably cumbersome.

For these reasons, the effect of requiring people to get permission to
include others'  poems in public readings is very likely going to be
that people will stop including such poems.  The situation is of
course much different for people who deal with information (whether
words, pictures, digital, etc.) as a business:   they typically have
staff to handle permissions for them who know whom to work with.

One thing that does bother me is that I've found one or two web sites
that have appropriated my copyrighted verse translations without
attribution.  These sites, of course, include no contact information
to complain to.  I suppose I could sue them, but the costs of tracking
them down and getting a lawyer would almost certainly be a very high
multiple of any award I could get, so I've decided not to bother.  I'd
be interested to know, though, if anyone else has done anything like
this.

-- 
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   Jon Corelis     www.geocities.com/joncpoetics/

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