Blogger’s guide to avoid copyright violation

Blogger’s roadmap to avoid copyright violation

Bloggers are getting in trouble for their posts? You have probably heard that a lot of times. Bloggers are citizen journalist that publishes sensitive issues that they are not aware of the consequences.

Most of the time, excerpting sentences from other blog posts and sharing contents are what bloggers do regularly. They take something out of many sources and compile them into one nice article. For some bloggers, these acts are not accompanied by the knowledge of copyrighting issues. Just because the web offers free content sharing, it doesn’t mean that you do not have rules to follow. Especially for business blogging, the knowledge in copyrighting is extremely important if you don’t want to be accused of content plagiarism.

So, if a blogger is considered as citizen journalist, then what’s the difference between a blogger and a journalist? Journalist is a well trained worker who seeks news and informs it to the public in a legal way according to the news values. On the contrary, blogger is also considered a journalist, but without the training and sometimes, without acknowledging any regulations about how to distribute an information.

When your livelihood depends on blogging, copyright violation can bring unattractive outcomes. Here are some guides you can use before you extract any content from other sources.

Ask politely

The virtual world requires you to ask politely as in real world. Even when all the contents are easily accessible, you still need to ask permission from the owner whether you want to quote or upload their content to your blog. Some bloggers find this as an appreciation to their posts. So, there’s no need to worry about that. This goes the same with quoting people. Provide a back link is a safe way to give factual resource of what you are writing.

Use creative commons

Creative commons is a non-profit organization that provides the license for writers on how they can share their content. When you visit their website, you will be provided with standardized guides for allowing public to use your work.

Link back

A backlink is a way to thank the creator for giving you useful resource. This is a good way to give credit.

Use your own image

Using a picture to complement your article can be tricky. Since you are not sure whether the image you download from Google is free to use; using your own image provides you the safe ground. If using other photo is required, again, ask politely for direct permission to use the image. You can also make the image clickable to direct readers to its actual source.

Blogger and journalist are treated differently in the court room. The law and regulations have not yet decided how to apply journalism laws to bloggers. Thus, in this case, it is better to prevent than to fight. For better understanding in your rights to blog or defend yourself when dealing with lawsuit, you can get more information by visiting Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) website.