I am starting a Internet product review site which reviews mainly ebooks. Is it legal for me to use blockquotes of paragraphs within the ebook without contacting the author first? thanks
I'am not a lawyer, so do not take this as legal advice - there seems to be mixed feelings on this issue. Some people say "yes", you can use small transcripts from copyright protected material. Such as doing a review of the book. But, google was sued for giving a preview of books that are copyright protected. Here is a google page of that settlement - http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/ You might want to read through what google books had to change and go from there. Personally, I would not use anymore then 1 or 2 sentences from any given copyright protected book while doing a review. If you are going to sale the material that contains the copyright protected material - I would contact the copyright holder and get a written release.
Yes, for review purposes it is covered under fair use. However, you can only use a SMALL sample of the work.