Copyright and Fair Use For Bloggers

A few weeks ago, Swapna tweeted about finding some of her posts copied completely without her knowledge or consent. I’ve noticed this before from time to time with my own content, but have never done anything about it. I don’t have any real knowledge about what is acceptable to do with web content and what is not. For myself, I use my conscience and the Golden Rule as a guide. When Swapna mentioned that she was going to post about this, I asked her if she’s like a partner because I wanted to find out more for myself. We put our heads together and this week we are presented a three part series. Today our focus is copyright infringement versus fair use.

Although we’re posting together, we are each going to have our own take on the subject. Be sure to check out for another perspective.

I decided the best place to start my research was to define exactly what copyright, fair use and copyright infringement are. First stop, Wikipedia:

Copyright is “a set of exclusive rights granted by the law of a jurisdiction to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.”

One important thing to mention is that a copyright notice is not required for content to be protected by copyright. Since 1978, copyright notices were no longer required to protect the intellectual property covered by the copyright laws.

Fair Use is “a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders.”

While copyright is fairly straight forward, there can be some fuzziness surrounding what is fair use and what is copyright infringement, especially on the Internet. By popular consensus, the following items fall under fair use:

• There are some things that don’t fall under the copyright laws: names, common symbols, facts, ideas, slogans, titles, or lists of instructions such as a recipe or “how to” type of content. Those can be used as desired.
• Anything in the public domain can be used without request or penalty. If the content’s intellectual property has expired or were forfeited, it falls under the public domain. Shakespeare and Beethoven fall into the category of expired rights. Expired intellectual property is pretty easy to determine. Forfeited intellectual property rights is another matter. When in doubt, it is best to check to ensure that content is in the public domain.
• Quoting of short pieces of text, so long as it is appropriately attributed to the author or web page is allowable. There are those who believe quoting the meat or heart of another person’s work in a quote does not fall under fair use. For me, indicating the original author should be fine. Quotes should be used sparingly to make a point. I probably wouldn’t read a blog that overused or included lengthy quotes. I want to know what the blog owner thinks, not something second or third hand.
• Finally, so long as you’re not trying to deceive people into believing you are the company or are some how associated with it, company names and logos fall under fair use. If you’re reviewing or critizing a product or company, you can feel free to use one or both of those.

This item in particular made me think about book covers. As a book blogger, I review many books a year and like to include the book cover in my reviews. Although I can’t imagine that a publisher or author would be against having their book jackets displayed prominently, I checked into this further. The best resource I found on this topic was from Open Reading. Using thumbnails of book covers falls under fair use similarly to quotes.

Copyright Infringement is “the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.”

So what is considered a copyright violation? Well, I couldn’t really find a list of specifics. Basically, if it’s not covered above, you need to contact the copyright holder to request permission before using another site’s content. That includes reposting an entire review or other type of posting, which is what started Swapna and me on this project. Doing the right thing really isn’t that hard. The blogs I visit regularly have an email address prominently displayed. So, if you’d like to showcase another review, a review format, a graphic, just send a pleasant email requesting permission. While it’s possible your request will get turned down, I think you’re more likely to find that they are flattered that you enjoyed their work enough to use it. Not only will you get the satisfaction of not having to worry about a lawsuit (it turns out the worst that can happen isn’t just a nasty letter, but more on that later this week), what goes around tends to come around. Down the road, another blogger may just be contacting you.

Later This Week

On Wednesday, Swapna and I will be discussing how to find out if your content is being used without your consent. If you’re a blogger who has dealt with this, please send me an email and let me know how you found out. I would appreciate your input.

Friday, we’ll close this series with a discuss of your legal rights and options when your copyright has been infringed upon.