Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Question About Copyrights and Quoting with Linking...

This is a rather serious post - I hope people can shed some light on this for me.  I have been using mostly articles to provide content while working on some original stuff.  Apparently in the Terms of Use of many of these sites, users are prohibited from using the information in other websites (though I am quoting and linking back to the original sites)...  I do not know how to handle this, as I do not want to leave myself liable to civil/criminal action.

My question to you all is this: what would you do?  I am torn between just putting a blurb about the articles I post then a link to the articles to be opened in another window or keeping things as it is and seeing what happens.  I know I am not the only person that references/uses content and would like some input as to how you all would handle this.  If I have to I will dismantle the blog and redo all my posts with summaries and links to the articles... but would like to avoid it if possible.

I look forward to comments.

43 comments:

  1. I post a link, a short excerpt (a paragraph or two) and some thoughts on what I linked to... if they want to read the whole thing, they can click the link...

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  2. I recently synthesized two different news articles together into one super-article. I quoted the sources, figured it was enough. I doubt anyone is trolling the internet looking for copyright violations...but then again, we live in the U.S., the most litigious nation on the fucking planet. I just wouldn't worry about it, if I were you. Even if someone does make a fuss, if you just take down the offending content you can avoid lawsuits.

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  3. I'm pretty sure this falls under fair use as long as you're not quoting the entire thing or using it as your own words.

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  4. Maybe talk about the article not just copypaste it

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  5. Thanks for the comments so far - I usually quote the whole thing - but I do NOT remove the author info/links included/anything else... and always link back to it. I'm thinking it should be ok.

    By the way - I will be deleting this post at some point once I get some more opinions, but PLEASE leave comments until then so I get a good idea of opinions.

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  6. Not completely sure but I'd feel it's the same as citing in a paper.

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  7. i'd just run it through babelfish until it was such a mangled abortion nobody could legitimately get mad at me for it.

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  8. I believe you just need to properly cite the works you are getting your information from

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  9. As every other news source does, essentially you just have to summarize it in your words, then put a link and give credit where it is due. And I doubt someone would come after you with a lawyer if you aren't making more than 50k a year off of this.

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  10. I suppose if you give your opinion about the article and post links to it there's no way they can take legal action against you, now copy and pasting it with no refference to the original author is plagiarism.

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  11. Umm usually I quote stuff, iunno, u think it would be worth it to cite in MLA format through bibme.com? Automatically does it for you, and then it would not be plagiarizing now would it?

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  12. I would just restate in my own words and then link to the original article for further reading and perhaps say something like "inspired by". Who would get mad at you for extra traffic?

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  13. Quotes are OK, but not the whole thing you're copying. Reference to the article is appreciated and credits i guess.

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  14. Theres a bunch of safe guards to do. Leave a disclaimer, rewrite the article a bit, always credit author, leave link to it and check out licenses on the content if there are any.

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  15. Thanks for the insightful comments on my last blog post!

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  16. I'm not entirely sure that it would be necessary to rewrite your entire blog, but for citing things like images, it's probably not that difficult to put caption on it describing where you got it...

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  17. I would put things in my own words, and post the links for the details.

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  18. i make sure i link back to the original site

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  19. so you think you can make it ?

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  20. Hm...I dunno. This is a sticky situation of which I am at a loss as far as advice...

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  21. looks great!
    i like it .

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  22. Personally, I don't really care unless it's going into a college assignment/academic paper or something of the sort.

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  23. I agree with Bluerad, In school we are taught that as long as we reference where we got the info from then it is not copyright infringement. Just make sure you site your source.

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  24. I'm an avid reader of yours so I'd appreciate it if you headed over to my blog and voted in my poll and stuff =)

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  25. I'm an avid reader of yours so I'd appreciate it if you headed over to my blog and voted in my poll and stuff =)

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  26. you should be alright if give credit where its due ya know

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  27. interesting, cant wait to see more :)

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  28. can't really comment mate. i dont got any clue.sry

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  29. Just... link it and use quotes... You're saying that's somehow against the law now?
    Man, copyright laws are so confusing...

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  30. Keep going as is just make sure to keep up on the OC, "fair use act"

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  31. As well as TOS violations never amounting to any criminal charges, with only a minimal possibility of misconstruing a possible civil suit, that would cost more than they would ever get in a judgement if they COULD squeeze out a judgement, Keep up the quality posting!

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