Copyright violation & blogging: a tricky subject
May 21, 2007 By: almostgotit Category: blogging, jokes, plagiarism, videos, writingI’ve long since learned that when my stomach hurts a certain way, I need to pay attention. This was especially useful when it came to evaluating boyfriends in the old days (my wise old Yoda stomach always knew when it was time to dump them!)
And now my stomach has hurt a couple of times in relation to this blog.
Of greatest concern to my stomach have been a few things like intellectual property, copyright, fair use, and the intersection of these things and blogging. I think most of us know that quotes should be properly attributed whenever possible. And the documentation for Wordpress (my blogging host) basically okays the resyndication-by-linkage of YouTube videos (as Wordpress basically handles it by linking to the YouTube videos without actually hosting them) In other words, if YouTube pulls them (as YouTube will, if complaint is lodged) the video will cease to function in a Wordpress blog, as well.
There are also many things on the ‘net for which authorship can no longer be determined. The resume bloopers I posted, for instance, were collected from a number of sites, all without attribution and all appearing on more than one site, as well, thus making it impossible even to identify the original online source.
Jokes are even older than the internet, of course, and even harder to give sources for: really, there are only three basic jokes in the world, I think, and all the rest are derived from these three! (I must confess with some pride, however, that the Marilee Jones joke was almost entirely my own creation…)
Probably the real sticky problem is images, or pictures. Photographers and artists own their intellectual and creative property, and may even depend upon their work to make a living, just as much as writers do. Of course. But many (most?) bloggers post other people’s photos and artwork, while very few (if any) of us are paying for them.
I think there are several ways to look at this problem. “Fair Use” can be a tricky concept, but a great deal depends on whether one is financially profiting from someone else’s work, or using it for educational/instructive purposes, instead. Blogging is commonly viewed as a kind of news reporting or commentary, and therefore would often seem to pass the 4-factor test for legal fair use
However. While using properly-attributed images might seem analogous to including properly-attributed quotations, one rarely uses only part of an image. Therefore, using someone else’s picture is probably more akin to using someone else’s entire poem. And when is (or isn’t) this an okay thing to do?
Another way of using images, which I’ve applied to some (non-profit) websites I’ve managed, is to make them into links to (and therefore, promotions of) the source site. Is that legitimate? (Then, of course, stealing bandwidth is yet another issue, and few perps even know they’re doing it. This is when you link directly to an image online, rather than downloading it first and then loading it to your own host.)
Because of the need to balance the surge of interest in the “open source” democratization of the internet with the need to protect the livelihoods and right of individual artists and authors, an increasing number of images are now made available through creative commons licensing, an alternative to full copyright protection with the goal of encouraging users to “Share, reuse, and remix — legally.”
Anyhoo, for the sake of my stomach, I am going to go back through my posts and clean up a little.
But I would also very much welcome further feedback and suggestions from my readers. How does plagarism and copyright protection REALLY work in the blogosphere, and is it enough? Is attribution enough? Is it best to leave other’s work, especially images, out entirely? (one can always LINK to them instead)
Please weigh in! My stomach thanks you in advance.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:19 pm
My personal opinion: plagiarism and copyright are really “in the eye of the beholder”, unless you’re dealing with stuff that’s exclusively and overtly protected. When I can (and it hasn’t been an issue yet on my blog), I try to cite a source for a quote and at least give a link; if I can’t remember who it is, I forgo the quote — that’s why it hasn’t been an issue for me yet. Just easier to figure something else out than to worry about getting it right.
If it were my material, I’d prefer just a link and an attribution — the link mainly because I can always use the extra traffic. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who don’t care at all, and a lot of people who’d jump at the chance to sue someone for using a couple of sentences from a blog or a picture that everyone else seems to be downloading too.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Plagiarism, no matter where you find it, is stealing someone else’s work and presenting it as your own. Quoting from or paraphrasing other writers, with attribution and links, is, to my way of thinking, what makes the Web so rich and interconnected. Printing a line you can’t remember the source of and asking if anyone else knows where it came from is not plagiarism—it’s a query. I would be very pleased if someone quoted from my blog with credit and a link, of course. I print my own recipes on my blog, and the only copyrightable part of a recipe is the form in which it’s written. You can’t sue someone because they, too, put celery seeds in pimiento cheese. Maida Heatter’s famous brownie recipe from the 1980s is nothing more than Irma Rombauer’s 1930s recipe doubled.
Images, though, are different from words. It’s not just that you rarely use part of an image. The problem of using a copyrighted image without permission is that you might reprint it incorrectly—minus some layers, with a skewed color palette or pixels—so that it’s not at all what the photographer or artist intended. The photographer who takes the food shots for my blog taught me how to prepare originals for the Web so that all the layers are included and the color is right and the cropping. We even made a template with a copyright line that’s a permanent part of the image. Someone could lift a photo and pretend it’s theirs. But a public record with a copyright line is all the legal protection you need—or can get.
All that said, I do hope that if someone steals my words my Copyscape protection will spot them on the Web. Computerized tracing works with music. iTunes is what brought down Joyce Hatto, the plagiarizing British pianist.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Thank you both so much for these comments. Mcory1 has hit upon a prudent way of largely avoiding the issue, I think, and also provided the insight of “if it were my material…” which is perhaps the most helpful perspective of all when thinking through these things. “Do unto others,” etc.
And rockyroadoflove, you continue to be such an inspiration (not to mention knowledge-source!) for me. (I should add that Rocky is a fellow refugee from The Institution Which Shall Not be Named… and may never know how inspirational she has been on that front, as well!)
May 24th, 2007 at 12:05 am
This happens, too:
I just wrote a post and found it a few minutes later posted on a site called http://thatsthenewthing.com/, which is clearly set up to scrape other people’s content and profit from associated GoogleAds revenue. My stats counter clued me in with a link from their site. I reported it to GoogleAds using their “violations” form, and also posted a comment to the blog itself informing them it was copyrighted material and was to be removed immediately. I imagine this site will be gone by morning and they’ll set up a new one…
(next morning update): The site’s still up, but both my content AND GoogleAds are now gone. A giant Blockbuster ad is still there, but I clicked through and reported the violation to Blockbuster, also (and they are liable, too, so long as they continue sponsoring the site.) Finally, I found the owner of the content CURRENTLY posted (where mine was yesterday) and gave them a head’s up.
Meanwhile, my own blog’s spam comment count has just shot up, too… they’ve FOUND me.
Welcome to the Blogosphere, folks.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Goodness! I’m such a novice still. What’s a spam comment count? Do you mean the website traced you from your complaints about them? I want readers to copy my recipes for themselves. That’s the whole point of a cooking blog. Should I add a line to my copyright blurb saying copying for personal use is encouraged? It’s the re-publication rights I want to control.
May 24th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I wasn’t clear, sorry: the spam is unrelated to the other incident. The spam is the “Viagra & nude hotties” type of stuff, and it is being submitted to my blog, by spam robots, as comments on my posts. It really only started to appear a few days ago — probably because my blog is still relatively new. I was told to expect it eventually, though… like termites, spam is not an “if” but a “when.” Fortunately, the Akismet feature (a default on Wordpress.com!!) has intercepted them all so far, and the fact that I must approve comments before they appear is the final fail-safe.
Some blogs collect ad revenue legitimately, using the blogger’s own content. (though many free blog hosts, including this one, don’t allow ads.) The BAD blogs are those set up with random chunks of “scraped” (stolen) content just to support the ads. Scams, in other words. Note: GoogleAds is on to these folks, and they patrol the sites using their ads. They also have a system for reporting violations. I am impressed at how fast they pulled their ads off this one! The site is still up, however, and seems to be soliciting.
Anyone more experienced than I want to weigh in with more insight on any of this?
August 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
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