berserk du soleilif you're working on art you plan to sell, like a game, book, or movie, you can't quote from copyrighted work without permission. permission is a literal legal document you inquire about from the author or copyright holder, plus often at least a token fee. IANAL, check into it for yourself 👍
Lunar 🛸 ♾
Josh Grams@lunarloony @aetataureate In the US it isn't true that all quoting without written permission is illegal, but "fair use" IS a huge gray area that courts decide very inconsistently on, so depending on your degree of risk tolerance... it may be easier to just not risk it, yeah.
The law has four criteria for whether something is fair use:
1. The nature of the re-use (non-commercial uses, or "transformative" re-use like parody *may* get more latitude)
2. The nature of the copyrighted work (factual stuff generally gets less protection than artistic/imaginative, stealing un-published work is really bad)
3. Amount *and* "substantiality" of the portion used (so if you're re-using the heart of someone's work, that's worse)
4. Effect on the market (are you directly competing or reducing the copyright holder's sales?)
@JoshGrams @lunarloony Josh, you know I like you very much, but that page lists all examples that are different than what I said and non commercial. If I were making a piece of fictional narrative media to sell, I would always seek permission. (I used to compile front and back matter for books as my job.)
@aetataureate @lunarloony Ah crud. I don't know how to respond to that. What you're saying is pretty different to what I've gotten from lawyers the few times I've had occasion to talk to them about it.
But getting proper legal permission is always going to be the safer option, and I don't want to be (further) obnoxious about it so... yeah. I'll work on that knee-jerk "hang on, hang on, you should check that you're not paying them tribute that they have no right to" reaction. Sorry about that.
@JoshGrams @lunarloony it's okay! I'm sure lawyers look at it differently, as the people who would argue it for you. It's like wondering if doctors can fix a particularly bad broken leg. They probably can, but I'd rather not skateboard down the slide in the first place.