Talk:Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Latest comment: 15 years ago by Moonriddengirl in topic Summary detail

Summary detail

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Hi, my entry has been flagged as being a copyright infringement and blanked out. I just realized my summary of this book is way too detailed. I have rewritten the material, on a temporary page, to make it MUCH SHORTER. How do I get out of the doghouse so that I can finish editing the article in public and have it displayed as a permanent page? Thanks!

Hi. I'm inclined to think that your temporary page is also too detailed, particularly in its context. Summaries of works can be regarded as "derivative works", which are the right of the copyright holder alone to prepare. It is common to provide them in the context of book review, but in that case a finding of "fair use" is likely, as the nature of the work is transformative. In a typical book review, you are not simply producing an abridgment of the author's material, but critically analyzing it. Aside from your lead sentence, everything in the article is a straightforward reproduction of the author's thoughts and conclusions. There is no significant transformation by which we could assert that its purpose differs. Ideally, I would suggest that you cut the summary down to at most a few paragraphs, all in one section, and that you give it critical context by adding additional sections. You might provide an overview with some excerpts from reviews; there seem to be plenty of news sources at [1]. You can provide a brief background section, explaining how the book came to be. There are some stellar resources you could utilize at [2], [3], [4] and [5]. The important thing to remember is that your article should "add something new" for readers. If what they are getting from you is a "CliffsNotes" (or distilled) version of the book itself, then you may be infringing on the author's rights. If you provide a brief overview of the main points of the book while also giving more, that's less likely. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)Reply