What Good Movies Or Tv Shows Are There Based On The Kennedys Or Reference Them Are There

When writing a book, is it okay to mention/make references to famous celebrities, movies, other writers, songs, copyrighted stuff and related things?

When you are writing a book, during the actual writing process itself, yes all of these are allowed.It is publishing the book that can triggering copyright infringement, libel, and other legal issues.This is why publishers have lawyers that go over the entire book and clear all of the content. This is a very important legal service that publishers offer, and something that self-publishers often fail to be aware of.In general, yes, you can actually use real names in passing. Names of movies, writers, songs, books, celebrities, etc. What you cannot do is use actual copyrighted material: an excerpt from a book, lyrics from a song, dialog from a movie. But names do not enjoy copyright protection. In fact, it would be silly if they did since you could refer to anything in writing if they did. Nominative use is when you just refer to something by name and that is totall allowed.But you cannot go beyond that and use someone’s character. Sure, you can say “His hair looked like Harry Potter’s hair.” (By that way, don’t. That’s horrible writing.) But you can’t actually have the character Harry Potter in your book. That would be copyright infringement.And you run into all sorts of potential for libel if you include real people doing things they did not do in real life. Sure, mentioning them is okay. But turning them into a character in your book is a touchy subject. Disclaimers can help, but are undercut by using a real name of a real celebrity that is obviously a representation of that person.And, if your book is non-fiction then you must have a lawyer go over the book to look for libelous statements. There really isn’t anyway to make that risk safe otherwise.But again, this is the publisher’s headache, not yours. Unless you center your book on a fictional representation of a celebrity, making it essentially nonpunishable, you really aren’t negatively impacting your chances of finding a publisher by having a song quote or referencing Google or having a character carry around an iPad.Meanwhile, be aware that there are books like this out there:Shatnerquake“After a reality bomb goes off at the first ever ShatnerCon, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner. Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Priceline Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Rescue 9-1-1 Shatner, singer Shatner, and many more.”