Copyright Violations and Plagiarism on ActiveRain are coming to an end, but it may not happen over night.

When you see a Police Car ahead, and you're speeding, don't you slow down?  Hopefully Harlen will have that same impact and affect as he travels around and throughout the Network.  I have heard he's already making a dent on AR.  His presence alone here should make a difference, knowing he's lurking in the shadows.

This post is in response to a thread of comments I read yesterday; The Active Rain Police: So now what, everyone gets booted?  Posts like Gregory Lohr's prove that the word is out, and that the message is starting to go Viral. Carolyn Tann has also written a post in the Club Chaos Group and even emailed the members regarding this topic as well.  It all stemmed from this announcement that Harlen had arrived on the scene.

Is the message clear?  Members want Clarity and Answers.   

Lenn Harley, as witnessed in the comments of Greg's post, is very well versed in the area of copyright laws and violations.  Still not clear on Copyright?  Just go read Lenn's Blog and all her posts on the topic.  She's a great resource for what you can and can't do.  Also review http://www.copyright.gov    

IN A NUT SHELL:

The idea of posting jokes, poems and recipes etc. is fine, it's your Blog, just don't copy and paste or plagiarize others sites and other authors material.  Create your own.  Be an author, not a copycat.  It's OK to take a small snippet, then add a link to the original source, but then write about it in your own words.  How much of a snippet is acceptable?  Great question.  I would never use more than a sentence or two max, just to be safe. (That's just my opinion, not sure it's a Harlen, Lenn, or copyright law)

Pictures, Graphics, Images, Screen Shots, Logos, Art work?  Simple, don't use them unless they're yours, or you paid for them.  Make sure you clearly understand the rules and copyright laws of the sites that offer them (questionably) for FREE.  Just be safe and not sorry.

ARE WE SAFE?

As far as Harlan and his role here, my understanding is that he is going through ALL Blog posts, both NEW and OLD trying to help clean up our network.  All he's requesting is that you go through your own Blog, and clean it up.  If you don't, the penalties here are pretty stiff.  CRUSH PLAGIARISM!

• One reason is to protect you, our member.  In my opinion, it's better that you find your posts before Harlan does, and it's even better if Harlen finds these posts, before the original authors do, wouldn't you agree? Have you seen some of these fines? OMG!
  

• Secondly, asking members to go through their own Blog posts and clean them up is alot easier and faster than Harlen trying to go through all of them himself.  You're helping him, he's helping you. 
  

• Thirdly, this effort makes our Community and Network a much better place and resource.  We want to provide ONLY original content for our visitors.  We get over 7,000,000 visits per month.  This adds Value and Integrity to the network, and it keeps our traffic coming back while at the same time referring us to others.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

One last important issue to consider about copyrighted material, you need to make sure you are copyright protecting your own content too.  Our members produce some of the best stuff on the Web, and we need to make sure we're protecting our own content as well.  Cleaning up our Blogs is a much easier process than going out there and trying to find out who has violated us in the same manner.  Shouldn't we be just as concerned about who's stealing our stuff?  Yes.  Check out Copyscape.com, I see many members use this site for their AR and other Blogs. 

I see a day coming soon when we will have to change Harlen's role on AR because he will eventually help Crush Plagiarism here.  Then we'll give him additional tasks like Smashing Spam, and Deleting Gamers etc.  Help us give Harlen that new role as soon as possible, clean up your Blogs, and get rid of anything that's not yours.  It should be clear as day!  Keep Blogs safe, stay clear of Harlen and the Copyright Police.

Photo Image Courtesy of FreeFoto.com: Thank you for using FreeFoto.com. Please remember to give attribution and a link back to this site. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License  Image Reference: 04-04-12