Fair use of a Movie Script in a text book

[filmfx66]

What is the name of your state? CA

I am writing a text book on visual effects and I would like to include a page of text from a movie script to show it as an example for script analysis.

If I retype the text myself and give credit to the original writer does this violate any copyright laws? I would probably be using 1 to 2 pages of an entire script.

thanks in advance for any help.

Billy

 

[divgradcurl]

What is the name of your state? CA

I am writing a text book on visual effects and I would like to include a page of text from a movie script to show it as an example for script analysis.

If I retype the text myself and give credit to the original writer does this violate any copyright laws? I would probably be using 1 to 2 pages of an entire script.

thanks in advance for any help.

Billy

Merely retyping and giving credit will be insufficient to protect you if the copyright owner decides to sue, and relying on "fair use" to protect yourself is troublesome, because "fair use" is a defense you assert in court after you've been sued, and not a "right" that you can assert up front.

Your best bet, if you have a particular script in mind, is to try and obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the portions of the script you are interested in -- that way, you'll know that you are completely in the clear.

If that won't work, then you have a couple of choices -- you could use the script anyway, and hope you don't get sued (not recommended); you could use a script that is in the public domain, and therefore no permission is required (anything published in the U.S. before 1923 would do the trick); finally, you could draft your own script fragment from scratch for the book.

But just using the script and relying on "fair use" to protect is pretty risky.

 

[filmfx66]

Thank you for the reply.

I will either get permission for the script in question or as you suggested, just write my own couple of pages to use as an example.

Thanks,
Billy