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Should Bloggers Care About Copyright Infringement?

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Decision ImageIf you blog long enough, it’s not so much a matter of if but when your site gets infringed upon. Between the spammers that are likely to scrape your posts, plagiarist bloggers that will take what they like as their own and others who will try to share your content in ways that don’t give you as much as a link back, you’re bound to hit at least a few infringements if you look hard enough.

But should you care? Is it really worth the time to search for such infringements, find them and stop them? After all, many bloggers have their content infringed upon and never even realize it, seemingly not hurt by it at all. Others, however, appear to obsess over it, tracking every infringement and working doggedly to stop it.

So which approach is right? Well, that’s a personal decision and it’s one that stems from your specific situation including your search engine position, your personal feelings toward your work and the other sites in your niche.

Whether you want to care or don’t want to care, it’s pretty easy to justify your position. However, it’s important to be honest and make the decision that’s right for you and for your content.

With that in mind, here are a few factors to consider. [Read more…] about Should Bloggers Care About Copyright Infringement?

Are Bloggers Journalists? Are Journalists Bloggers?

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Journalism Image of NewspapersIn 2010, a survey conducted by PRWeek and PRNewswire found that over half of all bloggers consider themselves to be journalists. This was up from just a third of all bloggers two years before.

The question of whether or not bloggers are journalists is an old one and it can be an important one legally. As the EFF puts it, journalists can often times keep confidential sources private, gain extra protection in libel cases in the form of retraction statutes and receive fee waivers when Freedom of Information Act requests.

But while all of this is true, The Atlantic, in 2011, argued that we shouldn’t care whether or not bloggers are journalists, that the issue isn’t very important and that reporters at large publications and organization have much stronger protections than the title “journalist”.

Still, the subject is a sensitive one for bloggers, who are often eager for the weight and credibility that comes with being a journalist. When blogger Crystal Cox was ruled to not be a journalist in 2011 and ordered to pay millions in a defamation lawsuit filed by the founder of an investment group, after denying her protection under the state’s shield law that protects journalist sources, many bloggers took up arms. However, once the details of the case came to light and it was clear just how wrong much of Cox’s information was, attitudes slowly changed.

But it leaves the bigger question unresolved: Are bloggers journalists? To get the answer, we have to first look at what the question is really asking and try to drill down to the important answers. [Read more…] about Are Bloggers Journalists? Are Journalists Bloggers?

Google’s Pirate Penalty Adds Another Reason to Not Plagiarize Online

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Skull and CrossbonesIf you didn’t already know that it wasn’t a good idea to plagiarize content on the Web, you missed a lot of reasons to not do it.

Not only is it ethically dubious, almost always illegal and prone to serious duplicate content penalties from Google, but it’s also a quick ways to make enemies of people you should probably be trying to work with rather than fighting against.

However, if none of those reasons are compelling to you, then Google has provided yet another. Late last week, the search engine announced that it will begin factoring in copyright notices it receives, a so-called “pirate penalty”.

What does this mean? Simply that Google will begin demoting sites that are the subject to a large number of copyright notices. This makes it so that copyright holders, in addition to possibly being able to shut down your site, they can also seriously hurt your search engine ranking more broadly.

Though the move is largely targeted at websites that traffic in pirated content, plagiarists and spammers should be given at least some pause for concern as this new clampdown could easily impact them as well.

The devil is in the details and Google has been very stingy with those to date. However, there is a little that we do know. [Read more…] about Google’s Pirate Penalty Adds Another Reason to Not Plagiarize Online