At 08:04 PM 9/6/99 EDT, you wrote: >I have just finished reading a book about copyright and I still haven't >gotten the questions answered: How long do newspapers retain copyrights on >news articles. Are you allowed to copy up to 300 words or the whole article >as long as you give impecible resources references? Anybody out there in >cyber land konw the answer to this one? > >Dawn E. >[email protected] Copyrights for newspapers are the same length as anything else published. There have been a number of copyright law changes over the years, so there is no absolute answer for every situation, but basically, if the newspaper had a copyright notice on it, anything after abot 1922 is still covered. After 1978, I believe, the requirement for a copyright notice was removed.... everything published after that date is covered by copyright. Really there is no blanket definition as to what is allowed to be copied. Whenever you see something like 300 words or 1 page or some such, that is some individual's or organiztion's rule of thumb. All the law has is an allownce of "fair use." The limits of fair use are not well defined, intentionally left so by Congress. Fair use is very applicable to scholarship and research, both of which are very important attributes of genealogy. ( I have a web site on U.S. Copyright and Genealogy. My page on fair use is at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad/html/copyright9.htm ) Mike Goad Mike Goad (check out our on-line bookstore at http://www.cswnet.com/~sbooks , including genealogy)