# Fair-use guidelines for crafters and hobbyists



## DeeAnna (Mar 11, 2017)

Whether you are running a B&B business or are a hobbyist, it's hard to know when you've stepped over the boundary of "fair use" or not. Are you copying someone else's work or are you creating your own unique designs and products?

Here's an "infographic" that gives some useful guidelines although I have a quibble with the author's title of "Copyright Guidelines." The chart is actually less about copyright and more about the broader concept of "fair use." Fair use covers the general idea of "what can I legitimately claim to be MY own work?" and when should I, in all fairness, give credit to another person.

Copyright rules fall within the doctrine of "fair use" but is more narrowly defined (at least in the United States) as this -- "...A copyright protects a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pictorial or graphic, audiovisual, or architectural work, or a sound recording, from being reproduced without the permission of the copyright owner.... Copyrights do not protect ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries: they only protect physical representations...." Source: https://cyber.harvard.edu/property/library/copyprimer.html


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## penelopejane (Mar 11, 2017)

It needs a category between unrecognisable and an exact copy.


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## Zany_in_CO (Mar 11, 2017)

This is great! Thank you, DeeAnna! I followed the link to your "soapy  tutorials" and was blown away to see one for "salting out" soap. In my  13 years of soaping, I've never seen anyone else who's done this, or  even tried it, and I thank you BIG time for sharing your process. I also read through boyago's tutorial. 

I have to tell ya,  the way I did it was pretty simple... I grated up some soap, tossed it  into boiling water to which I had added a cuddle of salt, and watched.  In 15 minutes or so, the curds rose to the top where I scooped them out with a slotted spoon, put them into  nylon knee highs, molded them into "tennis-sized" balls while squeezing out as much water as I could and hanged them on a banana holder (highly technical, I know). Every day, for  several days, I squeezed water out and hand-molded the soaps into balls. The result was the purest, densest, most gentle, yet thoroughly cleansing soap I've ever made. Lovely soap. I lost about 1/3 soap from the original batch. The water left in the pot was dark brown with gunk that settled to the bottom. I'm not so sure that this technique is worth the trouble (???) but it sure was fun!


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## PuddinAndPeanuts (Mar 12, 2017)

This is fantastic!


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## Susie (Mar 12, 2017)

penelopejane said:


> It needs a category between unrecognisable and an exact copy.



If you go all the way to the far right where the question about if it is a class or curriculum, and you take the no option, it gets to that place between unrecognizable and exact copy.  

Unless I misunderstood what you were referring to.  Which is entirely possible, and please correct me if I am wrong.


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## penelopejane (Mar 13, 2017)

Susie said:


> If you go all the way to the far right where the question about if it is a class or curriculum, and you take the no option, it gets to that place between unrecognizable and exact copy.
> 
> Unless I misunderstood what you were referring to.  Which is entirely possible, and please correct me if I am wrong.



I guess you can't twist "making soap" into that category and make it stick!


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## DeeAnna (Mar 13, 2017)

penelopejane said:


> I guess you can't twist "making soap" into that category and make it stick!



PJ, at first you seemed to be asking about a soap _design_ -- perhaps wondering about adapting of another person's design vs. making an exact copy. But now it seems you're asking about process of _making_ the soap. Not sure I understand. Care to explain?


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## penelopejane (Mar 13, 2017)

DeeAnna said:


> PJ, at first you seemed to be asking about a soap _design_ -- perhaps wondering about adapting of another person's design vs. making an exact copy. But now it seems you're asking about process of _making_ the soap. Not sure I understand. Care to explain?



Sorry I was asking about the design. So I don't think the "tutorial" example really works.  If I make a soap with layers that I might have seen somewhere it comes between an exact copy and recognisable. 

I know when designing a house you only need to change door swings and it is an original design. It would be interesting to know what constitutes a sufficient change in a design to be your own design.


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## DeeAnna (Mar 13, 2017)

I think if a person closely copies another's work, meaning the end result of their work looks so close to the original that its hard to tell them apart -- then that is imitation, not fair use. On the other hand, a person can use the same technique but different colors and different details and get an end product that is recognizably different. That's fair use.

There have been whole schools of painting based on using a common philosophy or design technique -- the pointillists and impressionists are two that I can think of. As long as using a given technique resulted in a clearly different outcome, it was fair use, not copying or imitation.

Think of the Clyde Slide technique that had a bit of a craze awhile back. There were a LOT of people making soaps with this technique and the resulting pattern is pretty distinctive. But most people used their own color combos and finishing details, so it was obvious the soaps were not mere imitations of Clyde Yoshida's work. I'd say that was fair use of a common technique or a common concept to create an individualized result.


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