princessofgeeks: (Default)
princessofgeeks ([personal profile] princessofgeeks) wrote in [personal profile] podcath 2012-11-29 02:50 am (UTC)

I don't; I'm guessing.

But drastically changing the medium or the purpose is one way that works are considered transformative under fair use.

On the other hand, creating and selling an audiobook of a given written book is now an accepted thing in publishing, so those rights are definitely written into contracts. Whether they are sufficiently transformative in a noncommercial setting has never been litigated, as far as I know.

But making a play of a nonfiction book -- a different medium -- survived a copyright challenge, I THINK. I could be very wrong about this.

You're right about the legalese, though. It's hairsplitting that would make a theologian cry. And I'm admittedly way out of my depth here without doing some research.

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