Copyright Concerns

In the early days of the OEDILF, some of our authors played around with basing limericks on existing song lyrics, some of them old and some of them not so old, which raised the thorny issue of copyright. A piece based on the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon” prompted some soul-searching, as did another on Brewster Higley’s “Home on the Range”. A crucial difference between the two was that the latter was in the public domain while the former wasn’t, but both raised questions of how many lines it’s fair to quote from an existing work.

In the U.S. and the U.K., lyrics remain in copyright for 70 years after the writer’s death (or in the case of writing partnerships, that of the last to die). So you’d have to wait for Paul McCartney to collapse in a corner, and then wait seventy years, before using Beatles lyrics; or negotiate a licence from Northern Songs; or just keep your lyrics-referencing limerick for your own private collection.

Fair use or fair dealing principles depend on the context. A two- or three-line quotation is a small enough percentage of the original song that, if it were used in a review or an academic essay, there should be no problem with claiming fair use (with appropriate acknowledgement in the form of a reference or copyright notice). But when it’s incorporated into a new creative work and makes up half of that entire work, it arguably goes beyond fair use. If it ever came to court, it would hinge on how much of a song you’d used, how important it was to the piece, and similar considerations. I’d say that quoting a single line would be reasonably safe territory, while three is probably too much. (As the standard disclaimer goes, I Am Not A Lawyer, but have spent some years researching copyright issues as they relate to the Internet.)

In the music industry, tiny samples of songs reused in completely different ways nevertheless require permission from the original writer. Richard Ashcroft lifted a few notes from an orchestral cover version of a Rolling Stones song for his band The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”, and by the time ABCKO’s lawyers were done with him he had to share half of the song-writing credit with Jagger and Richards and hand over all of the publishing royalties. Reusing the lyrics of another creative artist to create a new artistic work is closer to sampling than it is to quotation for the purposes of research or review; one could argue that the only reason such a piece even exists is to reuse Lennon & McCartney’s lines, so our author’s half of the limerick is less important than theirs.

I wish I could be sure that crediting the original author(s) would be sufficient to head off objections, but my non-lawyerly advice would be to take the risks seriously; ask the webmasters of the hundreds of Star Trek and Simpsons fan sites that were closed down in the early 2000s. Having a good reason for using it wouldn’t help us much if it came to court, so a one-line maximum seems prudent, whether or not there’s an artistic, definitional, or humour-related case for using more.

As for Brewster Higley’s “Home on the Range” and the limerick taking four of its lines from its lyrics, there’s no question of copyright infringement in that case, but there is one of artistic credit and who gets it. At one extreme, imagine a wholly original work by one of our authors; at the other, the lyrics to Higley’s song. In between could exist any number of hybrids: a new piece that quotes a few words from Higley’s song; a piece that’s half and half; or a piece that’s almost all Higley’s, as in this example. Who gets what credit, and who has the moral right to create such a work in the first place, are complex questions. Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and turned it into art, and he gets all the credit for that. Is fitting pre-existing lyrics to a limerick an equivalent artistic act?

The question of the originality of a limerick based on another source is best decided case-by-case by authors and editors; it’s just a question of how original we want to be. Two longer lines quoted word-for-word would be my personal limit, and I’d say the parody should transform the original in some substantial way; it shouldn’t just make the same point about a different person or place. Otherwise how is it really yours?

We have many limericks that parody well-known sayings, so are just as “unoriginal” (and original) as parodies of lyrics, poems or literary works. I don’t think a source of parody should be off-limits just because it’s a poem rather than a book, movie, or famous individual. But we should take care to use our own words as much as possible; that’s part of the challenge. I once wrote a piece that alluded to Blake’s “The Tyger”, and would happily defend its originality, because it doesn’t just reproduce Blake’s lines wholesale; although it uses key words and rhymes to evoke his poem, they aren’t expressed in the same way. In another verse, I invoked the spirit of Edward Lear with nothing more than a pussy, an owl, a boat and green-ness. Both of these sources are in the public domain, so I could potentially have quoted more from them, but I wanted the resulting pieces to be mine rather than theirs.

Questions of copyright infringement are another matter. If a work was published more recently than 95 years ago and the author is still alive or died more recently than 70 years ago, it’s still in copyright in the U.S., and quoting more than a line is risky at best (in the online context U.S. copyright affects non-Americans as much as Americans, no matter what our local laws say). If neither of those tests apply, it’s in the public domain; if only one applies, it might be.

I consider the length of copyright terms excessive, myself, and don’t like the way intellectual property laws are headed, particularly as they apply to the Internet; so I’d say we shouldn’t shy away from reusing public domain material like Higley’s “Home on the Range” in interesting ways. The questions in those cases should only be about how and when to share the credit, and whether the reuse is worth it. Now more than ever, it’s important to demonstrate ways in which having stuff in the public domain can lead to the creation of new work. If we don’t fight for our public domain rights, we’ll lose them.

For more on copyright terms for literary works—which differ considerably from country to country—see Project Gutenberg’s summary.

And while we’re on the subject of intellectual property... a fellow OEDILFer wondered: “I’m still curious if trademark symbols are pronounced or silent when used in a limerick.”

So, do you often eat at McDonald’s Registered Trademark Restaurants? Really? I hear their Big Mac Registered Trademarks are delicious serving suggestion only! Especially when followed with a nice creamy Chocolate Triple Thick Registered Trademark Shake if swallowed seek medical advice.