Blogging Basics – Is Copyright Important?
Copyright Matters
Originally, in my blogging basics series I was going to continue last week’s post about photography (see Using Perfect Photos – Blogging Basics ). My focus changed this week because of an incident that happened to me Monday evening. I briefly talked about images and copyrights in my last post. I didn’t realize how relevant that topic would become in my life.
One of the blogging basics is having your site listed in the Google search engine. One of the fastest ways to NOT have your site listed by Google is to have complaints about copyright violations that you have committed. If you are already listed in Google they can and will remove posts from their site for these violations and if the infractions are bad enough they can stop listing your blog. Copyright infringement is serious business and should NEVER become something a blogger forgets! Google can even remove a person’s personal account from all of their services.
Defining Copyright
If a blogger is to follow copyright laws you first need to know what copyright infringement means.
What is copyright infringement?
As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.Source: Copyright - U.S. Copyright Office
One of the blogging basics a blogger should know is that you are responsible in learning about copyrights. I am not an attorney but I am trying to become more familiar with the laws and my rights. In 1998, the president signed the DCMA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) into law. The DMCA helped to clarify that a copyright pertains to online material and there are penalties for improper use of digital content (it is something a blogger should learn about).
Most bloggers want to know, “Is my work copyrighted?” and the simple answer is yes. According to the U.S. Copyright Office a copyright protects, ” original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression” (17 U.S.C. § 102) A copyright is in place the moment we write an article and save it (original work not reblogs). Bloggers can display a copyright notice on their site stating that their work has a copyright (it is not required but helpful in legal matters). If you do get a copyright through the copyright office it provides more legal protections and possible monetary damages.
Blogging Basics Learned
Three days ago I was doing some basic research about my website, dadblunders.com. My site had been recently listed by the DMOZ and I was checking on inbound links because of the new listing (most bloggers check). During my research, I found that I had duplicate content listed in the Google search engine. Bloggers are naturally curious and I am no different so I went to investigate the duplications.
The duplicate content was listed for sale on the brokencontrollers website (if you decide to visit them do NOT click on their flash items). Brokencontrollers is a known site scraper that attempts to “hijack or steal” traffic from other sites to boost its ratings in google (if you decide to visit them do NOT click on their flash items). While I was on their site I clicked on something and it gave my laptop a virus (from their website). A virus I continue to fight on my laptop and the reason I haven’t made a post in the last few days.
I have mentioned in the past, blogging is about building relationships and helping each other. I decided to check out a few of my friends to see if they had posts on brokencontrollers. It didn’t take me long and I found posts from The World 4 Realz and Like a Bump on a Blog. I contacted them and shared the information. Between the three of us we had our blog posts removed. I would have checked more sites and probably will again but the virus has limited my computer abilities (I am using my wife’s computer). I thought I would offer a few tips and suggestions on the steps we took against the other site and what I learned in the process.
Sharing is Learning
1. Search - If you want to know if the site that stole our posts has you listed you need to go to Google search engine and type in brokencontrollers/[your URL]
2. Examine - If nothing comes up in the search engine you are probably okay. If you do see items in the list with brokencontrollers listed as the main URL (it will also have the title of your post) they are using your article.
3. Responsibility - It is the bloggers responsibility to contact the owner of the site that is using your material. It is important to tell them they need to remove the content because of copyright (we also told them we would take legal action if it happened again). My friends, Jesse and Andi, at The World 4 Realz found who we needed to contact [[email protected]]. We received a quick response from the other site saying that they removed our posts.
4. R.S.S. Feed – My post was most likely taken from my R.S.S. feed. Amberr, from Like a Bump on a Blog, recommended a possible change to my R.S.S feed by having it show only a summary of my post (instead of the entirety). You should also make sure that the your R.S.S feed adds a link back to your blog post showing the article was first seen on your site (I use Yoast WordPress SEO to do this)
5. Google Alerts - Set-up Google Alerts Monitoring. Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that watch’s the latest results from around the web. I am monitoring my entire URL, the name of my blog, my real name (with and without my middle name) and I just started taking a snippet of my blog posts from the middle of new posts that I publish (it is less likely someone will change content in the middle of a post).
6. Site Monitoring - You can also use Copyscape to double-check Google Alerts Monitoring. Copyscape has a free search engine that you can use to check to see if a posts appears on another site (the also offer a paid services to watch your site).
I work very hard on sharing information with other people. I have been known to give away ideas to other bloggers. I believe in the blogging community and I have a basic principle to help others. As a father, I want my son to know the difference between right and wrong and selling my articles without prior authorization is wrong.
Copyright infringement is a very serious offense for a blogger! Do you have a copyright notice on your blog or posts? Did you do any research on copyrights and can offer any tips or suggestions that might help another blogger? Please tell me in the comments!
You can read my last post here: Daring Halloween Costumes – Could A Daughter Wear Them? If you like this post you can follow me on facebook fan page at Dadblunders.
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Tags: copyright violations, copyrights, derivative work, photography
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Well, Aaron, this is certainly illuminating. Brokencontrollers.com got one of my better posts and I will take steps after commenting here to get it un-posted from their site, as well as following your other suggestions. I never worried too much about copyright, for myself, as I am not trying to keep a roof over my head, or feed a family. However, I do care about you all, and I truly care about content and the principle this abrogates. So, I’m playing detective here. I am not sure that the website in question obtained my post through the RSS feed. Since I have some tools and access, I’m going to hunt around and see if I can’t narrow down exactly where this may have come from. There are so many ways for people to come in “back doors,” these days. JAVA is a huge sinkhole of security loopholes. I have just disabled mine and am slowly ridding my system of it. I run it only for the applications that absolutely require it. I’m all about secure. I’m happy it’s only one post. Ugh.
Thanks, Aaron, I miss the happy; this kind of thing made me madder than hell at IBM and Verizon. Having to chase down rogue servers, repair damaged O/S and applications, documents and Hard drives was never my idea of fun. All of this stuff is malicious and for gain or just to create chaos. Boo! Mary
Mary,
You are more than welcome! Please let me know what you find out…I would greatly appreciate your “detective” skills and knowledge!
Aaron
Thank you for this post. I did a search and yep – they have 2 of my posts listed. I guess I’m off to contact them to try to get them removed.
*Wanted to add that I just did a blog post on this and linked to you encouraging other bloggers to read your post and check this website for duplicate content.
I found just the one post of mine. I don’t blog or write to earn money… yet. But the principle of this just bugs the daylights out of me. We all work hard to put out quality product. Argh. I know Aaron worked really hard to run this down for us. Aaron is Superman and Batman all rolled into one. Oh he’s just such a great guy! Thanks, dadblunders.!
You are far too kind Mary…You are correct though I put a lot of effort into making sure that this post was accurate in the information I presented. I make sure all of my post are reflected correctly on information but I went beyond on this one (I think it was because I was super aggravated)
Aaron
Thank you for that! I appreciate it a lot! I am hoping to let as many other bloggers know as possible. I was positive that more people were having their posts stolen without knowing it. I wanted to post this a few day ago but the laptop issues have slowed me down.
Aaron
I am glad it helped you! I know when I found out I was ready to hit the ceiling….even more so after my laptop got a virus from them….sigh
Aaron
Good post and thanks for writing it.
I have one question:
You Worte: “You should also make sure that the your R.S.S feed adds a link back to your blog post showing the article was first seen on your site (I use Yoast WordPress SEO to do this)”
I use Yoast but not sure how I set this up. Would love to know how to do that.
Thanks in advance.
David,
Thank you!
If you go to your RSS feed in Yoast you will find that it talks about content of your feed. First one is for information to place before your RSS feeds. Second one down is information to place after your RSS feed. The idea is to add links back to your posts.
Aaron
Thanks Aaron!
David,
No problem! i am glad i could help!
Aaron
Great post! As a fellow blogger I feel this is almost a second job to persistently follow this apsect through! I wanted to share a new alert service I’ve found more effective than Google Alert: Mention. It seems to have a more sophisticated algorithm and even if you aren’t cited it traces your content. I was just informed of a republication of a full recipe, text and photo from my blog. It is on a blog hosted out of a service in Greece so I’m now endeavoring a take down. Do check out Mention though; it’s been great.
I tried Mention and Copyscape, Mention does use a very sophisticated algorithm and I like it a lot. I love Copyscape, as it reads for specific language usage. As my syntax can get rather tortured at times, I had 7 hits. The sites had been responsible and already removed my references. I can’t figure out Google Alerts. It’s way too porous for me and has too much “front end” stuff in the way of choices. I’m too Boolean for things like that. I’m a sad thing. This has been so tremendously helpful. Aaron is THE MAN!
Copyscape has some nice features. I thought for some bloggers it might even be worth the small fee they charge to use their service. I am planning on checking out mention still!
Aaron
Toni,
Thank you so much! I am glad you enjoyed the post. My intent was to try and help as many people as possible because I am certain there are lots of people that are having there content stolen. I know many bloggers don’t understand the ramifications of copyright theft and that the fines on an individual can be as $150,000. I know it’s not something I want to find out about….yikes.
Aaron
We’re so glad you’re helping educate bloggers about copyright. As you point out, with Google now taking DCMA complaints into account when doing search engine rankings this is only going to become a more important issue. Copyright is not only important, but it will become increasingly important as more as the technology for copyright enforcement gets better with time.
Thank you!
I already realized the importance of copyright before my incident and this just reaffirmed my beliefs. I wanted to make sure others knew the importance of copyrights and they actually do have avenues to pursue if they find an infringements. I also knew that anyone that wants to blog needs to be aware of the DCMA and Google rankings (a issue that can’t be emphasized enough)!
Aaron
I found a couple of my blog posts on their site. So now I’m off to get them taken down. Thanks so much for sharing this info.
Glad I could help you! I knew there would be a lot of bloggers that had their posts being “hi-jacked” by them. My intent of this post was to help as many people as possible.
Aaron
I use my free copyright and mentions to monitor my posts/articles. So far so good.
Dominique,
I have no problem with anyone using my articles and linking back to me. I did have a huge problem with not being asked about selling my articles though. I think when you start to sell someone else’s work you have crossed a major line. I have been known to give away ideas and credit to others. I don’t like when someone doesn’t even ask me anything and places a price tag on my work that I am unaware of. Just my opinion of course…..
Aaron
P.S. I am always looking for quality link backs! it’s part of wanting others to find out about the quality work we produce!
Great Post!
The “Great Post” patrol strikes again!!! I need to look up copyrighting laws on the overuse of a phrase next…..lol
Aaron
This really is a great post. Lots of helpful info! Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how many details there are to worry about with this.
Gina,
I understand being overwhelmed by the amount of detail it can take if your goal is to have others find you and enjoy the quality work you produce! I can tell you it’s worth it. I have seen a large spike in search engine results by learning about keywords and the proper use of photos and ALT tagging.
Sometimes, I think that there is actually more things to do and learn than one blogger can do alone. I know that’s why I try to share the pieces of knowledge I have picked up and hope I help someone else.
Aaron
Amazing, thanks for this post I did find one, and I will set about getting it removed. How annoying, I thought it might be just a certain type of post but it seems that its anything, even nokia is in there, that might be trouble.
Ashley,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I had an unplanned surgery that placed me away from the blogging community for a few weeks. I haven’t forgotten your post and I hope to have it soon for you. Please forgive the delay but life sometimes has funny surprises for us.
I know I was very annoyed when I discovered my posts on this site. I am unsure what they think they can gain (except rank in google) It seems they like to irritate people….just my opinion of course.
Aaron