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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/16967
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I attended a speech that was open to the general public and took my own very detailed notes of everything that the speaker said. I would like to publish my notes as a report of the speech. **Does copyright law let me do this without requesting permission from the speaker?**

I will fully attribute the speaker as the source--that is, I will clearly mention that these are my personal notes of the speaker's original speech; there is no question of plagiarism here. My notes are very detailed, so they capture almost every idea in the original speech, but they are not a verbatim recording (though some phrases here and there are probably verbatim).

I know that I can eliminate any concern by requesting permission from the speaker, but I want to know my rights even if I do not request permission. So, if the speaker doesn't want to give me permission, would copyright law still let me publish my notes anyway?

I am in Canada, but I would appreciate the answer for any copyright jurisdiction, since the core principles of the international Berne Convention are quite similar.

Original score: 4