The Permission Seeker’s Guide Through the Legal Jungle: Clearing Copyrights, Trademarks and Other Rights for Entertainment and Media Productions

When deciding whether a book is worth the effort of reading, the first thing I do is look at the table of contents. The second thing I look at is the index. Turning to the table of contents, I discovered that the author begins with a summary of contents listing the chapters, and then sets out a detailed table of contents listing each numbered section of each chapter. This format is standard for law school texts and legal practice manuals, and the detailed table of contents can send you directly to topics of burning interest without having to search for them, either in the index or by thumbing through scanning the first sentence of paragraphs. When I turned to the index, I found that it, like the indices for most law books, is somewhat skimpy.

Because the book is formatted like a law school text or legal practice manual, I was afraid it might be written in the dry, prolix style of law school textbooks. It isn’t. It is written in plain, colloquial English, and the concepts are explained in lucid fashion. Another helpful feature is the generous cross-referencing done in the text. Because the author presupposes that you are probably going to use the detailed table of contents to go directly to your area of interest without reading the book cover-to-cover, whenever she uses a term or mentions a concept that you might not understand, she cross-references you to the section where it is discussed in detail. She also includes an appendix of forms for use in conjunction with your quest for permission to use (and use of) copyrighted materials.

I have read a number of books on copyright, getting permission, and the public domain, but I have not found one as user-friendly or as enjoyable to read as this one.