Hi everyone

Does anyone happen to know if the scanning / copying / screen grabbing of the page of a publication or website that contains your own work, (either an article, images or both), so that it can then be added to your own website as an image file to show examples of your own previous work and publications would fall within the 'fair use' aspect of the copyright laws in the UK?

Whilst we own the copyright of our own work in the publication, there may also be other items on the same page for which we do not own copyright, but as it is now a very common way for writers and photographers to showcase their previous work, I wondered what the legal / copyright position might be?

If anyone is in the know on this and can advise, I'd be most grateful.

Thanks

Ali

Now there's a good question - and I've no idea of the answer. I suspect that the stuff not written by you would be copyright, either by the author or the publication. You could ask the Society of Authors - they might know.

I guess you could always crop the image so it showed only your work, though then you'd lose the context of the publication, which is part of the point.

Emma

Thanks for your reply.

I'd thought of cropping too, but as you say, really it does need the publication to be obvious to make it worth having in a portfolio.

I'll try the Society of Authors and see if they can advise. Thanks for your help.

Ali