Forum Moderators: not2easy
First of all, thank you so much for taking time to read this message. I have just started to write an e-book but I am not sure whether I will be violating the copyright laws with what I am doing, therefore I need some advice regarding to the book.
1)If I were to mentioned some company's product in my book which I plan to distribute and sell, would it considered violating the law if I didn't ask the company's permission first? For example, if I wrote: " If you want to make your calculating process easier, you can use softwares such as Micros***'s Exc** or Lotu*'s... to help you." without making links to Micros*** or others, if I only use plain text to write the company's name or product?
2)If I were to include a link to an article in Wikipedia, such as in my book, I am thinking of writing something like a word 'football' but link the word to the whole article in Wiki, is it violating the law as well?
3)I saw some of the e-books out there which have the copyright statement such as:" No part of this book may be stored, distribute..." and the books also include links to some articles in Wikipedia, are these books violating the copyright law?
4)If I were to link some UK crown copyright or US governmental articles in my e-book, do I need to ask for permission first if I want to write something like:" If you want to learn more the tax system in the UK/US, you can click here to learn more." and link the word 'click here' directly to the article or the document(PDF,txt) or file(picture,video etc.)?
5)I am not sure whether it is necessary for me to state the source of the information that I put in the book but common sense tells me that it's better if I do that. The questions is how should I do that? If I take the above example in question 4, do I need to write something like source/credit: www.US/UKtax.org/file.pdf after ...click here to learn more or can I put them at the end of the book under the credit/acknowledgement section such as Credit/Acknowledgement:
Micros***, US tax office/UK tax office,...
6)If it is violating the law to link to other website/a particular page of that website, can I possibly write the URL such as www.example.com/page1.pdf(just plain text,not linkable to the real address)without making it link to that particular page/ website?
I know that the questions might be simple questions for some of you and probably don't deserve your effort to answer them but if you can, can you please at least point to me the direction of where I can find the answers? Thanks you so much in advance for your help .
My take on your questions ..one by one
Q1) ..A) ..you can go ahead with what you ask..no problem
Q2) ..A) ..you can go ahead with what you ask..no problem
Q3) ..A) ..you can go ahead with what you ask..no problem
Q4) ..A) ..you can go ahead with what you ask..no problem
Q5) ..A) ..either way is fine ..the latter is probably more aesthetic ..
Q6) ..A) .. you can do what you suggest .. but it would be more user friendly if you actually made the links live ..
:)
2) Generic everyday words are not copyrighted, and there is no copyright issue, that I've ever heard of, in posting a link to an outside source (especially as long as you don't, say, frame the source inside your own site, making it look like it belongs to you).
3) The e-book itself is what isn't to be stored, copied, re-packaged, re-distributed, etc. The targets of the links inside the book are unaffiliated sites, and are, barring some sort of deal between you and them, not subject to the e-book agreement.
4) You don't need to ask permission to link to a site, and informational sites exist precisely to provide information, so giving your users a "click here for further information" link is what those target sites are for. If you like, you could include language along the lines of "following this link will take you off the site; we cannot be responsible for the context of this unaffiliated site" to make clear that you are not claiming the site as your own.
5) Think back to when you wrote book reports. You had to use footnotes or endnotes or bibliographies and such, marking which text and/or information was taken from other sources. Providing a link to a bibliography on your own site (so all the listings are properly formatted and complete) by the use, say, of superscripted numbered hyperlinks would be good form. You can put links to the actual sources in the bibliography. That way, link-rot won't affect the actual articles, because you'll still have a listing of the resources used.
6) Once the links rot, if you can't find the new location of the resources you referenced, you can convert the links in your bibliography to text-only references when you update your e-book. (This is why proper formatting of online resources includes the date on which the site was accessed.)
Eliz.
