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PSA: quoting a small excerpt of a client's own doc is fair use, stop paying for clearance on every little thing
Saw a thread in a freelancer group Tuesday where a writer paid $150 to license two sentences out of a client's own internal handbook he was hired to edit. That is wild to me. If you are editing or reviewing a doc the client already owns and sent you, quoting short bits back in your notes is fair use, full stop, and no one needs a signed release for that. I have been doing copy edits for 9 years and the one time I asked a lawyer about it, she laughed and said 3 sentences for comment and critique is about as safe as it gets. Where you get in trouble is lifting whole sections into something you sell or publish under your own name, that is a totally different thing. Am I wrong here or are people just scared by all those clearance horror stories online?
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the_faith9d ago
The "clearance horror stories" are mostly people scaring themselves. Quoting a few lines back to the person who wrote them is nothing.
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