5 Myths About Copyrighted Material

I found this little corner of the Web many, many moons ago. Mr. Brad Templeton is the author of it and I often refer to it to freshen up my understanding of copyright law, which can come in handy for us bloggers, yes?

Actually, he debunks 11 myths. I just wanted to cherry-pick the ones I find most interesting or commonly misunderstood and approach them from a blogger’s perspective. I encourage you to get more detail by going to the full article itself (I mean, hey, this is about copyrights, right?). But I’ll say this before I continue:

I’m not a legal expert on anything. I trust Mr. Templeton’s article, and given his credentials, I feel justified in doing so.

1. “If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s not copyrighted.”
Not true. It helps, but since 1989, it’s not necessary.

2. “If I don’t charge for it, it’s not a violation.”
Not so, even if you distribute it free of charge, you can still be sued for damages under some circumstances.

3. “My posting was just fair use!”
I find this one a little tricky as it’s not easy to detect in some cases. But basically, if you use somebody else’s work in the form of a parody, commentary or the like, then it’s a darn good idea to at least attribute the source of your material. But of course, when in doubt, asking for permission is a safe thing to do first.

4. “If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to me.”
Not so fast there, cowboy. I think this is one that can be easily violated as a blogger. When you’re talking about a derivative work, permission still needs to be given by the original author. I think this is more easily seen with blogs that focus on actually writing stories of, say, fiction, but can also be applied to what any of us write as bloggers. In fact, I feel as though I’m walking a fine line here reporting on Brad’s article. Hopefully, it’s not too fine a line.

5. “It doesn’t hurt anybody — in fact it’s free advertising.”
Now this one gets me. Why would someone NOT want free advertising? In fact, I recall seeing on a blog a few months ago where the author of the blog wrote a review about a TV show. The star of that show actually dropped by the blog to comment. Included in his comments were his permission to use his photo, which was part of the post.

I thought it was rather inappropriate of him to do so because, after all, the blog’s author was doing him a favor by praising his work. But as Brad mentions in his article, it’s really up to the person you’re writing about to decide on whether they want free advertising or not.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I encourage you to read Brad’s full article to make sure you’re not missing a thing.

[tags]copyright[/tags]