Copyright, Libel and Invasion of Privacy: A Quick Guide to Publishing Law
Publishing your book should be a celebration. Protect yourself from hitting any legal speed-bumps along the way by understanding the intricacies in publishing law. We’ll guide you through three legalities every author should understand: copyright, libel and invasion of privacy.
Copyright
Your manuscript was given copyright protection from the moment it was completed. Copyright protection gives you the right to reproduce, derivate from, sell, give away, perform and display your book. Most importantly, it makes it illegal for anyone whom doesn’t have your permission to do anything listed above with your book.
Many of our publishing packages include U.S. copyright registration, but what does it do for your book? Although your book is copyright protected from the moment of its completion, it needs to be registered before you can take legal action to protect it. There are other legal benefits to having a copyright registration. If you register your book within three months after publication or three months before your book is infringed, you will be able to receive statutory damages and attorney’s fees.
For most cases, your book will have copyright protection for your entire life plus 70 years. The rules may be different for books created or originally published before 1978. To learn more about copyright, visit www.copyright.gov.
Libel
Libel and slander are torts that protect an individual's reputation. For authors, libel is the most dangerous. Libel is a written, false and damaging statement made about a person, product, service or company. A false and damaging statement is slander if it is spoken and unrecorded. Both slander and libel are forms of defamation. The 2008 AP Style Guide states: “At its most basic, defamation means injury to reputation.”
Did you include libel in your book? In order for a text to be considered libelous, it must be untrue, damaging and knowingly false. In order for someone to prove that it is damaging, they need to prove that your text caused harm to their reputation or business. In order to prove that it is knowingly false, they need to prove that you knew what you wrote wasn’t true, but wrote it anyway. The best way to protect yourself from libel is to write only the truth and keep your research on file.
Find out more in David W. Taylor’s essay on Amazon.com.
Invasion of Privacy
If you wrote only truth about a person, but it damaged their reputation, you could be sued for invasion of privacy. An individual can have an especially strong case against you if they are a private person - not a celebrity - and the information is not of importance to the public. Celebrities, or even private individuals thrust into the public eye, have a limited right of privacy.
To keep from being sued for invasion of privacy, be sure you don’t publish real facts about a person that could be embarrassing or detrimental to their reputation unless it’s a public concern and essential to your story.
Learn more about invasion of privacy, as well as defamation, in Amy Cook’s article in Writer’s Digest.
DISCLAIMER:
CrossBooks provides these publicly available resources to assist you with answering legal questions and concerns that may arise with writing and researching your book. These materials should not be deemed to legal advice by CrossBooks and should not be taken as such; CrossBooks disclaims any liability for any information provided by these sources identified by CrossBooks. CrossBooks recommends that you consult an attorney or accountant for advice regarding your specific publishing or writing questions. CrossBooks provides these resources solely to further assist you in your book publishing goals.