RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT COPYRIGHT, INFRINGEMENT, ACTIVE RAIN POSTS, ATTRIBUTION, LINKS AND SNIPPETS.
It appears that a RAINER got a post deleted because 99% of the post was not written by the member.
This is a gray area to many, but copyright is really simple. The creator or writer of an article is the ONLY person who has the right to any benefit derived from publication or distribution of an article, movie or book. Unless you have purchased and paid for the right to publish or distribute content written by someone else, you do not have permission to publish that material as content on your web site or blog post.
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE??? AN ACTIVE RAIN POST GIVES BENEFITS. THE BENEFITS GO TO THE ACTIVE RAIN MEMBER THAT PUBLISHED THE CONTENT ON THEIR BLOG.
IF YOU WROTE THE ARTICLE, you are the author and own the copyright on that content. You can print and distribute AND you can PUBLISH the content.
IF YOU DIDN'T WRITE THE ARTICLE, you do not own the content and cannot publish it - EVEN WITH ATTRIBUTION.
If you ask an author for permission to "REPRINT" and receive that permission, you may PRINT the article and distribute, perhaps in mailings or hand-outs in a relocation package. The author's name will be on the article. You are merely distributing the article and will benefit only by the limited number of copies distributed. the author benefits by having their writing distributed.
PERMISSION TO REPRINT IS NOT PERMISSION TO PUBLISH
By publishing an article written by someone else, you used the writing of another as bait to YOUR web site because there is a link on your post to your profile which has a link to your web site. This may not have been intended, but the benefit is real. Content is content and you can't use content created/written by another for your own benefit. The synergy of the Internet is complicated, but ANY content contains keywords, keyword phrases and they are SEARCH ENGINE BAIT. Content on Active Rain that is published also has a link back to the blogger's profile and the profile may have a link to the blogger's web site or sites.
LINKS FROM AN ACTIVE RAIN POST HAVE INTERNET SYNERGY
The original Active Rain post links to your Active Rain Profile
Your Active Rain Profile links to any "LINKS" you have added to your profile.
Your Active Rain post links to any outgoing links to web page(s) you include in the post.
Your web sites offer your services to the public and include your e-mail, contact information, name, affiliations.
Web links or blogrolls link to other pages on the Internet.
USE SNIPPETS AND LINK - THAT'S "FAIR USE"
The proper way to get the information to the reader would have been to publish an "introduction" or "snippet", three or four lines of the original material and then LINK to the article on the author's web site. The "Fair Use" exclusion under copyright law was intended for reviewers of original material, critics of books, movies, etc. to use "SNIPPETS"or short excerpts of original material and then publish the review of the original, not the original. When one publishes an entire article, they have violated the copyright of the author, even if you give attribution and include the author's name in the article.
Use Snippets and then LINK. LINKS make the Internet go round and round.
We don't even have to get into duplicate content. That's another post.
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