The redactive poem, "How to Be Charitable, Glenn Beck"

Inspired by a poetic method called “erasure” –  “where the poet erases portions of newsprint or blots out text from a novel, using the remaining words to create a different narrative than the original journalist or author’s intention” — a group of students in an intellectual property law class at New York University have launched the Redactive Poetry Project.

Parker Higgins, Amanda Levendowski, and Nick Panama say the aim of the project is to imitate the physical aspect of erasure poetry by having a website that “functions digitally by enabling users to redact portions of text from any webpage on the internet using our RePoMan bookmarklet to create a new poetic work.” That is, the site offers a nifty button that you can add to your bookmarks bar, then simply clicking on it at other websites allows you to “redact” or black-out parts of the text on that website. Redactive poets are then encouraged to take a screen shot of the result and send it to the website, where Higgins, Levendowski and Panama have been posting submissions since earlier this month.

A FAQ page on the site says “the ability to not only freely create in a digital medium, but to also share and network with other poets is central to the purpose the redactive poetry project.”

But as another question on the FAQ pages asks, “Is this site legal?” The answer:

…probably. on the one hand, by submitting poems made from the text of other websites, you are likely infringing on the copyright of the site owners and making an unauthorized derivative work. that said, there’s a strong case that you are actually creating new poetry from those words,  which would then fall under the category of “fair use.”

q: oh yeah? what is this “fair use”?

a: fair use is an affirmative defense defined in section 107 of the u.s. copyright law. it describes the types of actions that are not considered infringement of copyright, even though they might appear to be. most importantly, fair use is not a “bright line test,” meaning judges have to determine on a case-by-case basis using their best judgement. however, they’re supposed to consider a four factor test:

• the purpose and character of the use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole
• the effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work

we believe the redactive poetry project to be a fair use because it is non-commercial, sufficiently transformative, uses only small parts of websites, and is unlikely to have any effect on a potential market for those websites.