Does rewording questions make them not copyrighted?
<p>I currently work as a tutor for high school kids - so you can assume that this is commerical. To give them homework, I take questions from textbooks, past exams, and from online. I reword the questions and then redraw all the diagrams and then give it to them.</p>
<p>I've only just realised that this is exposing me to potentially a lot of liability due to copyright violation. But I can't possibly make this many questions myself that are of a high quality.</p>
<p>My question is, how much do I need to modify the question until it is no longer copyrighted? How much rewording is enough - if ever? Is redrawing the same diagram myself averting copyright? I've read things online that copyright cannot protect ideas, which in this case I would presume to be the &quot;tricks&quot; or &quot;essence&quot; of the question - and so the only copyrighted thing are the words and diagrams?</p>

<p>If you copy something without a license, that is copyright infringement. If you take a copyright protected work and create a work derived from it that’s copyright infringement. If you read these questions, put these questions away, and then ask someone else to write questions, describing what questions you want, that is <em>not</em> copyright infringement.</p>
<p>If you “modify”, no matter how much or how little, you get a derived work, with both you and the copyright owner of the original owning the copyright, so you can’t copy it without permission of the original copyright owner. And creating the derived work was copyright infringement in the first place.</p>

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