One of the strangest facts for a new blogger to fully comprehend and accept is that when one writes a blog article it is actually copyrighted and its use is subject to the writer.
There is a great blending and sharing of stuff through social networking sites and through private emails that many times totally disregard copyright propriety.
(Image via Wikipedia)
Folks send articles, pictures, and music across the Internet all the time to personal friends or friends of friends. It really doesn’t become a problem or an issue until whole articles are put up on Facebook or copied on blogs for the entire world to literally see without permission from the original author or even worse, without any links or attribution. It happens all of the time.
Images and pictures are even more of a problem. One really doesn’t have the right to put up a picture on a blog or website that is borrowed from another site without permission. Also, one can actually be sued for using pictures from regular news sources. Fact is, one really doesn’t have a right to put up a picture from the AP unless one is an actual paying subscriber to their news service.
When you are starting out and your blog has only a few readers you may get a pass but as you gain some credibility and significant international traffic, how you handle other folks copyrighted material will become an issue. It is better to learn how to properly link and attribute sources right from the beginning.
Also it is a good idea to put up your own expectations for how you expect others to treat your own material on your website. See the badge I have up for this blog from Creative Commons:
Here’s an excellent article on copyright facts and issues from The Blog Herald:
“5 Copyright Facts Every Blogger Should Know”
No comments:
Post a Comment