Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!

In 2024 YeahWrite’s free workshop is taking you all the places you want to be published — or at least helping you have the best chance possible at getting there. Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And don’t forget to check out the Writing Resources tab up **gestures vaguely upwards** there to find our previous workshop series on prompts and editing (not at the same time).

The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.

Should I copyright this

caveat: this post is written in the context of united states copyright law and is not intended for use as legal advice in any specific situation. 

And with that out of the way we’ll answer the most confusing question we get asked regularly. The answer is that you already hold that copyright, so can you figure out what you’re actually trying to ask so we (meaning attorneys) can help you?

If that sentence didn’t make sense, great. That’s what this month’s Scarlet Quill is all about, and we’ll help you figure it out.

What can be copyrighted?

Let’s jump into the hard part first. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) provides:

(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories: (1) literary works; (2) musical works, including any accompanying words; (3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4) pantomimes and choreographic works; (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7) sound recordings; and (8) architectural works.

(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

That’s a lot of words, so let’s focus on the important ones: original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression. That means to be copyrightable a work must be original to the author, and fixed in a medium. You might have an easier time if we give you some examples, so let’s do that: If you’re here, you’re probably thinking about writing, so we’ll draw our examples from there.

We’ll start with originality. The more original and unique a work is, the more protectible it becomes. Less original things like news reporting or instructions have narrower protections; poetry has broader. We’ll talk about those protections in a minute, but let’s get to the examples:

• Your shopping list: not very original. Copyrighted technically but only protectible in some contexts.
• A poem you wrote in third grade: Might not be good but counts as original for our purposes.
• Anything written by ChatGPT: LLMs are literally incapable of originality.
• Your Super Challenge story: Original, even though it was written as a response to a prompt.
• The idea you came up with for a story you haven’t written: Trick question, you cannot copyright ideas. So if you tell that great novel idea to a former friend…

The other piece of the puzzle is “fixed in a tangible medium.” Let’s see how that works:

• Your handwritten notes in a blank book: The writing is fixed (doesn’t change) in a tangible medium (you can hold the book in your hands).
• Your oral poem for a slam: Memories of seeing you do this are not fixed in a tangible medium. This performed piece is not copyrighted.
• The video of your performance at the poetry slam: Fixed in a tangible medium (copyright law holds that a digital recording is still “fixed in a tangible medium” because it is stored on a disk SOMEWHERE even if you don’t know exactly where or own the disk).

Got it? Good.

How do you copyright something?

Repeat after me: copyright inheres on creation. That’s right: the minute your original work of authorship is fixed in a tangible medium, you hold the copyright.

THAT SAID, confirming that you hold a copyright by registering it will cement your claim to some OTHER rights. Most importantly the right to sue if someone infringes your copyright.

So whether it’s worth it to you to register that copyright kind of depends on the probability of infringement and your likelihood of recovery in the event of infringement.

What are my rights?

As a copyright holder, you have the exclusive right to copy, sell, and distribute that work. You can also license or sell these rights.

So, infringement?

We’re oversimplifying, but there are basically two ways your copyright can be infringed- by direct copying, and by the creation of what are called “derivative works.” Derivative works are original works that are so based on another work that they couldn’t exist without it. So for example, fan fiction, fanart, and 50 Shades of Grey.

Not all of these things are infringement, of course. If you give permission (grant a license), or the work isn’t copyrighted in the first place (oh hey, did you know that Steamboat Willie, the original Mickey Mouse cartoon, is no longer copyrighted as of this month?) you’re not infringing. There are also exceptions for “fair use” – that is to say, where someone needs to for example comment on your text and can’t do it without providing examples. Want to get meta for a second? Here’s us providing you with an example of a critic providing an example from a book.

Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she’d arranged to do, with some mega-industrialist tycoon I’ve never heard of, for the student newspaper. So I have been volunteered. I have final exams to cram for, one essay to finish, and I’m supposed to be working this afternoon, but no – today I have to drive a hundred and sixty-five miles to downtown Seattle in order to meet the enigmatic CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. As an exceptional entrepreneur and major benefactor of our University, his time is extraordinarily precious.

She’s never heard of this guy, except that she knows the extremely unwieldy name of his company, that he’s an entrepreneur, that he gives tons of money to the school she attends, and that he’s super busy? This is the kind of logical error that I’m finding over and over in this book, and I’ve only read three chapters so far.

See how this critique couldn’t have been delivered without the actual paragraph from the book? That’s fair use. Simply summarizing the book, or taking the “heart of the work” isn’t fair use. There’s no word quantum that determines fair use, but in general try not to take a significant percentage or make it so that the reader doesn’t have to read the original work. Also the fair use exception has limited application. It’s for things like criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research and if you’re not using the excerpt for one of those purposes? You’re probably infringing.

In conclusion…

Copyright is both more and less complicated than you might think. The next time you’re reading a contract – including your contract with your favorite social media site – think about what rights you have in your content, but also what rights you have to grant someone for them to be able to do what you ask. For example, social media sites can’t make your content available unless you give them basically unlimited license to republish. That doesn’t mean they hold the copyright, but it means you are sharing your copyright rights with that site in order to display your content. And there are exceptions, such as works for hire, where the “creator” never holds the copyright because they sold the right to the work prior to creation. And as always, if you have specific questions you should see an actual lawyer who is not Rowan, because Rowan probably isn’t licensed in your jurisdiction.

But you will never, ever, ever avoid a copyright lawsuit simply by stating “these characters don’t belong to me.” That’s a literal admission of infringement.

Your turn!

Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society. 

Join the Scarlet Quill Society!

Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place once a month. This month’s meeting is scheduled for January 16 at 5pm US Eastern Time. (Not on our mailing list? Sign up here!) Future dates and times TBD based on member and guest availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Yeah. We know. It’s best to have a fixed time. But we think it’s even better than best to be able to accommodate a diverse slate of exciting and qualified panelists, and we hope you’ll agree.)

You can also sign up for a monthly membership! Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.

• $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session. (The January meeting is free, but please use this link to RSVP!)
• $5 monthly subscription (Pen level): Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where we can discuss tropes in more detail, and your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors! Pen level members can also suggest tropes for future live discussions – our goal is to give you what you want and need!
• $3 monthly subscription (Pencil level): Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded and to the private Discord channel!

A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists. You can also sign up for a $1/month Paper level membership just to show us you love us.

Index

Wondering what the next meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society will be about? Not sure what we've covered already? Here's our club agenda for the year.

September:

• Read:
• Watch: September meeting

October:

• Read:
• Watch: October meeting

November:

• Read:
• Watch: November meeting

December:

• Read:
• Watch: December meeting

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me