DON'T CONFUSE GOOGLE WITH COPYRIGHT LAW. WHAT 20% RULE?? "DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!"
If you missed this one when on my Last Week's Favorites list, when Active Rain featured it, or on any of its other reblogs, this is an important post.
At last week's REBar camp, we all heard a cautionary tale of one of our own who hired a "professional" to put up her Facebook page. This pro snagged a photo from Google, and with no please take it down request, the copyright holder smacked our blogger with a $30,000 lawsuit.
So read this one very, very carefully!
If you have comments, please post them on Lenn's blog.
DON'T CONFUSE GOOGLE WITH COPYRIGHT LAW. WHAT 20% RULE?? "DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!"
Inspired by Linda Lohman's FEATURED article of Sept. 11 @ 3:46 p.m. about Google and ActiveRain posting (no link or reBlog because it's Members Only), I was left with more questions than answers.
Linda relates an experience at a barcamp wherein a speaker advised that . . . . . . "It's OK to Copy Someone Elses Blog and Change 20% then Call it Your OWN?"
WHAT???
I DISAGREE with that statement and would not suggest that anyone engage in the practice of publishing even partial works of others when the original content is altered by 20% of your own content.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORIGINAL CONTENT AND DERIVATIVE CONTENT IS IMPORTANT.
WHERE DID THE 20% RULE ORIGINATE?? After reading Linda's post, I went to the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cannot find that rule. If a speaker at a barcamp gave this advice, I'd like to see the authority sourced. Unless such a rule was disclosed by a Google spokesman, Mike Cutts or others, I tend to disbelieve many of not most tips about how to achieve high ranking in Google.
GOOGLE ISN'T THE COPYRIGHT POLICE. I can't find anything in the Google Webmaster Guidelines about this rule. Plagiarized content is indexed by Google all the time. Google isn't the copyright police. If Google were charged with identifying plagiarism, it could. It isn't.
Is it possible that that the speaker confused GOOGLE with COPYRIGHT LAW?
- Google indexes content and provides a system to SEARCH for search results ranked from the most relevant to the least relevant results. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf
Sure you can change 20% of content and Google may index it. That doesn't change copyright law that provided copyright protection of that original content for the entity that created it and owns the copyright to that content.
DERIVATIVE WORKS. Changing 20% of an original work, which is copyright protected would not change the "ownership" of the original work. Such a work would, I believe, be considered a DERIVATIVE WORK. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#derivative
§ 103. Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
It would appear that copyright protection still extends to the original content and that hasn't changed. The 20% added by another party is also protected by copyright law, but as a "derivative work".
The originator of the derivative work WOULD NOT THEN OWN THE COPYRIGHT TO THE ORIGINAL CONTENT.
I DON'T BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN MAKE A WORK YOUR OWN BY CHANGING 20% OF THE ORIGINAL. If you copy content created by someone else and then add 20% of your own original content, you'll own 20%of the content and the other 80% will still be owned by the original creator. You'll still be plagiarizing 80% of what you publish.
Of course, that is just my opinion. I'm not an attorney but those of us who publish reams of content, must be aware of copyright law by avoiding personal violations and to protect our own content.
Courtesy, Lenn Harley, Broker, Homefinders.com, 800-711-7988.
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