Digital Millennium Copyright Act -
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)1 was signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998.
It protects bloggers on the internet from copyright infringement. It is illegal for those who love to copy and paste material that was not written by the poster, but "borrow" or steal original content and place it on a post as your own.
There are many implecations and penalties, and you will be in libel for a judgement against you - and it could cost you big time - lots of money and even your reputation which to me is worth more than money!
There are those in Active Rain that are copying and pasting "whole" blogs, and pasting it on their posts and pointing out how "good" or "bad" the blogger and the blog is.
Without permission from the original poster, you place yourself in danger of copyright infringement penalties.
Google Blogger has a place where you can actually file a complaint and I have included this is this post.
Just because it is submitted in Active Rain - does not give anyone to copy and paste original material without the express written permission from the original poster.
I have spoken with Bob Stewart of Active Rain who he has informed me that he has to remove hudreds of posts a week which violate the copyright laws and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Please make your life easier this year - avoid lawsuits and use your original material in Active Rain or get permission from the person who are trying to exploit, use, or profit from.
Active Rain also has a wat to "ReBlog"a post without violating copyright laws and the poster gives permission.
Happy Posting and Happy New Year!
Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Blogger
It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. This page describes the information that should be present in these notices. It is designed to make submitting notices of alleged infringement to Google as straightforward as possible while reducing the number of notices that we receive that are fraudulent or difficult to understand or verify. The form of notice specified below is consistent with the form suggested by the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office Web Site, http://www.copyright.gov) but we will respond to notices of this form from other jurisdictions as well.
Regardless of whether we may be liable for such infringement under local country law or United States law, our response to these notices may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. If we remove or disable access in response to such a notice, we will make a good-faith attempt to contact the owner or administrator of the affected site or content so that they may make a counter notification. We may also document notices of alleged infringement on which we act. Please note that in addition to being forwarded to the person who provided the allegedly infringing content, a copy of this legal notice may be sent to a third-party which may publish and/or annotate it. As such, your letter (with your personal information removed) may be forwarded to Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org) for publication. You can see an example of such a publication at http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=861.
* Photo courtesy of Flickr.com
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