TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Copyright issues on Tufte's examples From:SES Authoring Tools - 381-1732 - ZKO1-2 <haramundanis -at- VAXUUM -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 13 Feb 1995 12:20:29 EST
As someone stated in this conference, the Minard chart of Napoleon's march
to Moscow itself is not copyright by Tufte because Tufte uses it as an
example and does not claim copyright on the chart itself. But all the words
Tufte uses to describe the chart are his, and Tufte holds the copyright
to those words. Often an author or publisher will allow small extracts
of a work to be used by others, for example as parts of book reviews, but
of course one cannot take large segments of a work and sell those. That
would be a violation of copyright law.
The Minard 'Carte Figurative' as reprinted by Tufte is not quite right, by
the way. The original poster, in the spirit of it as an anti-war poster,
had the outbound path in red, not in the paler beige that Tufte has used.
This does not alter the excellence of it as a statistical graphic, of course,
nor change any of Tufte's conclusions about it. Just a nit.