I need information about nasa world book. can i use the information for a book?

Question

i am writing a astronomy book. but i want to know if i can use the information on worldbook@nasa to put in my book. would i be able to use it in my book or would it be copyright infringment.

i heard you can use it for research(for middle school to higher education), but i dont know if i can take it or not.

i am in high school.

Answer 1

I am pretty sure that since NASA is run using tax dollars that they can not copyright their stuff.

Plagiarism is still possible, so if you refer to some ones work, then credit the appropriate source.

Answer 2

You can use ANY copyrighted material, so long as you give proper credit in your list of sources.

Answer 3

If you go to the bottom of one of the articles you will see the format for citations from the book. I have linked to one such article below.

You could therefore include quotes from the world book with suitable acknowledgements.

However you may risk facing legal action if you quote large extracts, with or without acknowledgment.    

To avoid this risk you  would be better to ask NASA before including large quotes (and if you think it is risky to ask them then think about the ethics of including the material in the first place!)

Take care with some of the answers that have been given, you are basically asking for legal advice and unless a response is from someone legally qualified to give it you may find yourself in big trouble if you follow it.

Answer 4

You can use the information as long as you cite your source, but you can't take any of it word-for-word - that's considered plagiarism, even if they haven't copyrighted the page (and I bet they have).  Just paraphrase it.