Friday, February 19, 2010

What can I legally copy from the Internet to use in my blog?

What can I legally copy from the Web to use in my blog?

You can never use an entire portion of someone else's web page. This is true even if the work is not copyrighted. If you do borrow a portion of someone's work for the purpose of presenting news on your blog, you should always link back to where you found it. Additionally, search engines hate duplicated content! That is why you should always put everything into your own words as much as possible!

You can copy small portion of other websites under certain conditions. Click to find out more.

According to Findlaw.com:
"Copyright law allows "fair use" of small parts of copyrighted works without the permission of the author. If the reproduction is for the purpose of criticism, news reporting, teaching, or research it is more likely to be fair use than if it is copied for commercial purposes. It is difficult to make this determination in advance, however. An example of fair use would be a book reviewer quoting a few lines from a book in an online book review.

A federal law passed in 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, makes it clear that materials published on the Internet are protected by U.S. copyright laws. The law makes some exceptions that are specific to Internet law. Internet service providers (such as AOL) can escape liability for infringing the copyright of materials that merely pass through their computers, for example in E-mail messages. If an Internet service provider removes infringing material promptly upon request, it also can escape liability. "



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