You spent hours researching and writing that article or finding just the right light and setting for that photo or getting just the right perspective for that painting. You are pleased with the result and post it to your website so that others can enjoy it or benefit from it. And two weeks later, you find your article, photo, or art piece displayed on someone else's website - surrounded by hundreds of ads and you never received any request for a reprint. What can you do? Sometimes it seems like copyright theft on the Web is something that content developers just need to grin and bear, but there are things you can do. And fighting theft is the best way to prevent it in the future. So, do what you can to protect your content online before it's stolen: add links, by-lines, and copyright information to your written works and protect your images with watermarks or low-res copies. And this article will help you with what to do if the content is still copied without your permission.
Learn how to protect your online content and fight copyright theft
By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com GuideFebruary 18, 2008
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Thanks for this valuable info Jen.
Where might one find guidelines on using copyrighted materials, such as exerts from books and movies? Do you have something previously published or other reference material?
Thanks as always.
Gary: If you’re a US citizen, then the best place to learn about using copyrighted materials is from the US Copyright Office. Even non-US citizens can get a good overview from there.
As a quick rule of thumb, if you’re not sure, ask. In other words, if you’d like to use something, the best thing to do is ask the owner if you can. You’re not going to get in trouble or annoy anyone for liking their work enough to want to use it or some of it somewhere else.
As far as I know there isn’t a specific guide as to how much or little of an excerpt constitutes fair use. But on that matter, there are some basics – it’s pretty much impossible to use a photo or graphic in a way that is fair use. 1-2 sentences quoted from an article would probably be fair use.
unless you have a lot of money for a lawyer, there really is not a lot you can do…except don’t post anything you don’t want stolen.
S
Sinebeg: That is absolutely untrue.
All of the recommendations listed in this article are ones that I have personally used, without resorting to a lawyer or spending more than the cost of a couple of stamps. And I have so far had 100% success in getting my plagiarized content off of other websites.
I do agree that if you have something that you can’t afford to have stolen for even a tiny amount of time, then yes, you shouldn’t post it to the Web. But just posting something to the Web doesn’t make it okay for someone to steal it – and the techniques I’ve listed in this article do work.
I have added a link to your blog article on my site. It will help my readers with their decision on publishing their work online.
Thanks,
Bob
http://onlinepublishing101.blogspot.com/