Copyright
Copyright can be a tricky thing to deal with, as can be seen by my previous blog.
Copyright can be a tricky thing to deal with, as can be seen by my previous blog.
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After placing the blog the night before, the next morning I found this e-mail in my Gmail box:
“Hi,
I noticed you reproduced an article from my site oil-price.net on your blog http://cimba7200.blogspot.com/2009/01/did-you-know-borrowed-from-httpoil.html
You are not allowed to do this. This article is copyright so please remove it ASAP.
If you fail to remove my article I will have to report a copyright violation to Blogger who will suspend your account.
Feel free to link to my article if you like it, but don't steal it.
Steve Austin”
Shocked I did as requested, placed an apology on my blog site and sent a return e-mail apology to the sender.
Since then I have given the matter some thought, and have arrived at the opinion that Mr Austin may not have been correct for these reasons:
1. The website had no recognisable owner.
2. Nowhere on the website was there a claim to copyright for either of the articles that I copied.
3. I acknowledged the source of my material, acknowledging the website and supposed author of the articles, of which I doubt the authenticity of the name. This should have helped to make my use of the articles acceptable. As this type of thing happens often on the internet I wish to challenge here the authority of the writer of the e-mail, who does not appear to be the author of the articles.“Hi,
I noticed you reproduced an article from my site oil-price.net on your blog http://cimba7200.blogspot.com/2009/01/did-you-know-borrowed-from-httpoil.html
You are not allowed to do this. This article is copyright so please remove it ASAP.
If you fail to remove my article I will have to report a copyright violation to Blogger who will suspend your account.
Feel free to link to my article if you like it, but don't steal it.
Steve Austin”
Shocked I did as requested, placed an apology on my blog site and sent a return e-mail apology to the sender.
Since then I have given the matter some thought, and have arrived at the opinion that Mr Austin may not have been correct for these reasons:
1. The website had no recognisable owner.
2. Nowhere on the website was there a claim to copyright for either of the articles that I copied.
If Mr Steve Austin would like to contact me again I would like to discuss this problem further, and be willing to use this blog site to show all correspondence. As shown today, I will admit my mistakes, but I challenge your claim to copyright for the articles I used.
7 comments:
Yes, I agree - it is a sensitive thing but you did give credit and link was provided. If you had not posted it, I would not even have gone there in the first place. However, some people are quite protective over their work, but in my opinion, in the context of the internet and particularly blogging, as long as credit and link is included, and it is not for commercial purposes, they should actually be flattered.
Once I had wanted to post an article in my blog. But my case was different, I read the article in a subscribed journal. I wrote for permission and it was given graciously. Another time, I read an article in Christianity Today which was widely available - I just posted it, gave it credit and linked it. No complaints ... so far.
In that sense, if I were you, I'd just delete your post,link and mention of it and not give him anymore attention than he deserves.
Copyright is tricky. I don't know if you know this, or not, but when you create something, art, writing, poetry, song, the minute you finish it then it is automatically protected by US Copyright laws. And in court, the thing that can prove it is yours is your earliest sketches, your early words, your early melody, etc.. Once you finish it, you can go through a normal routine to get a copyright. The last one I got took several weeks and cost $20.00 US Dollars. I have a piece of paper saying I own the copyright.
Nowadays, there is a "Fair Use" clause in copyright law. You can copy and publish a short piece of poetry or novel or essay and give the owner credit and get away with that as it is legal. I am not sure about a photograph -- if you can copy it or not. If there is a symbol on it © then you should not copy it or use it. That's why Flickr has so many things about Copyright on your site.
I am not sure any of this means much and I am no longer an expert or up to date on copyright law. I do own hundreds of copyrights though and most were paid for as I outlined above.
Hmmm, let me know how that turns out. I've never encountered a problem like that. I might have copied and pasted someone's writing before. I usually make it a link back to the original article though.
Good luck to your cute granddaughter on her year long adventure. ps I'm partial to that name. : )
Touchy ground - sort of. I don't specify copyrights on my blog but I would be a tad annoyed if someone used my photos without asking, as has happened in one instance. However, I knew that the person in question meant no such "theft" since she did link to my page with a "courtesy of" reference. I just hadn't been given the courtesy of the request.
You did do all the right linkage as far as I can tell by #3 of your reasons. You weren't suggesting in any way that the article was your own. My guess is that Mr. Austin has come into this type of situation before, those that have reprinted with neither permission nor links back, and came out shooting from both barrels.
At the same time, I would be uncomfy if someone posted my private email on a blog.
Thanks to those of you who have commented on this blog. I appreciate your wisdom and support.
- Dave
From my understanding of Copyright Law, you were in direct violation. There is no reason to designate a copyright on your work, as someone mentioned earlier--it automatically applies. You cannot just copy someone else's work and paste it on your website, regardless of attribution. You can post an excerpt, with citation, but certainly not the entire work. Just think if you quoted an entire paper in a school report; cited or not--sounds like an F.
I'd use that as a learning experience.
Anonymous, Thanks for your response. I appreciate your views on this topic and feel sure, on afterthought, that you are right. I do feel though that the author should have to give some sort of contact identification so that anyone wishing to use the item may be able to contact them for permission to do so. If they had I would certainly have done that. - Dave
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