Not paraphrasing or copying the code is actually a service to your fellow monks. IMHO, it has the following advantages:

This article provides an interesting overview to the questions used to determine "fair use."

Interestingly enough, the O'Reilly web site contains an overview in their writer's guidelines.

Based on these, other sources, and my previous experience, I believe quoting from a Recipe is fine, provided you a) keep it reasonably limited, b) provide complete attribution (title, author, publisher, and ISBN), c) aren't competing with the publisher (e.g. charging for it), and c) don't try to pass it off as your own work (unless, of course, it _is_ your own work).

Mind you, I'm not a lawyer and there are a number of ways you can interpret these two documents, but if you read some of opinions issued in cases involving the Fair Use doctrine, it pretty much boils down to giving credit where credit is due and not competing with the original publisher/author.

P.S. I'm currently digging a little deeper into this; I'll update when I have more information.

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID.  redmist.
AUTHOR.  God (Larry Wall/Alan Cox hybrid).
CONTACT.  redmist@users.sourceforge.net

The "Fair Use" guidelines (Title 17 sec. 107) can be found here.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

I believe that quoting code from the perl books qualifies as fair use, this being a nonprofit, scholarly, even a teaching situation. Of course, I'm not a lawyer either...thank Dog. ;)
Perhaps merlyn would be in a better position to answer this question than most of us?

~monk d4vis
#!/usr/bin/fnord

Whatever exactly "fair use" covers, it certainly covers using short bits of sample code to illustrate a concept. Like redmist (or maybe not? =) I sort of cut and pasted an answer to a question (and was, IMO, inexplicably rewarded heavily in XP for doing so) out of the Ram book (my code differed in that I used $pwd instead of $password). Sure there's more than one way to do it, but in this case it was a *three line* snippet, using the functions provided by a module. Doubtless Messrs. Christiansen and Torkington (the authors of that book) would have given the same answer gratis as well. It might even be hard to argue that something that simple counts as *intellectual property* if IP laws are anything like patent laws (the answer is kind of obvious, once you know of the existence of the module). There aren't too many different ways to do it in a way that gets at what's *essential* in this particular case, and (as has also been mentioned here), by explicitly citing the book you do emphasize (a) the provenance of the concept and (b) the value of the book.

In all likelihood (I haven't checked) the same example, or something close to it, occurs in the documentation for that module.

Of course, I've been in an academic setting for a while, where we're *always* citing other people and that's pretty much all that "fair use" demands. I tend to view reproducing *snippets* of code, of the size and simplicity involved in this particular case, as not at all a big deal as long as the source is acknowledged. Now, had I reproduced somebody's published algorithm for cracking RC5 without brute force, that would be another matter =)

Not that my opinion matters, I suppose, to the copyright lawyers and judges...

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

Actually (in the US) the purpose of copyright law is to promote the production and dissemination of knowledge into the public domain. Preserving the ability of the author to make a profit is mechanism, not purpose.

In point of fact it is a spectacular failure at its intent because it has proven too easy for the owners of intellectual property to manipulate the laws. It also does not matter on a practical level either. The laws are the laws and they apply whether or not you or the author planned to make money - or even if the author intended (using the GPL) to subvert the whole system!

Although quite a few philosophers, etc. have talked about this sort of purpose in theory (think Nozick, Mill, etc.), I still think that the main purpose of copyright law (and patent law) is to preserve the author's (or inventor's) ability to profit from their work.

In general, these older legal traditions were created with the sole intention of allowing the wealthy to retain their wealth, in this case by expanding our normal understanding of property rights to include intellectual property. The idea with property rights in general, be they real or intellectual property rights is, first and foremost, retention of economic interest.

ivory