Getting Permission To Write About Others - Jacqui Lipton Explains It for Our Friends at the Highlights Foundation Blog

Over at the Highlights Foundation blog, lawyer and Senior Agent at The Tobias Literary Agency Jacqui Lipton shares a guest post, (When) Do I Need Permission to Write About Real People and Events?

Jacqui starts off with this overview:

If you plan to write about real people and events, you may face questions about when you need permission to reproduce text, imagery (photographs, maps, charts) or anything else you’ve uncovered in your research. The main body of law relevant here is copyright which basically prohibits reproducing and distributing other people’s work without permission. Note that the law applies to the actual expression of the work—e.g. the actual words the creator has used—and not the idea behind the work. Ideas and facts can’t be copyrighted so you only have to worry about copyright law, and permissions, if you plan to actually copy someone else’s protected expression. 

And then breaks down the information into four sections, 

1. Public Domain

2. Creative Commons

3. Specific Permissions—Licenses

4. Fair Use

The blog post is helpful and well-worth reading. (And if you want to dive in deeper, Jacqui also wrote the book Law and Authors: A Legal Handbook for Writers.)

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee