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Why Plagiarizing On Your Blog is Always a Bad Idea

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Lightbulb ImageBy now, everyone should know that plagiarizing on your blog is ethically wrong and, in most cases, illegal.

If you get caught the punishments can be severe as you can face legal consequences, including copyright infringement lawsuits, DMCA takedown notices and more, as well as damage to your reputation and your career.

But let’s say for a moment that you’ve decided the rewards, whatever they may be, are worth the risks. Let’s go on to say that you’re right and you’re able to blog and run your site for an extended period of time without having your misdeeds noticed.

That’s great right? This hypothetical version of you (which I will be addressing throughout this post) just beat the system, cheated death and managed to build an entire site using the works and ideas of others without attribution or consequence.

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. Even if you aren’t caught, plagiarism still hurts you and your site. Regardless of whether the world never learns your secret, you’re still setting yourself back.

Consider, briefly, the following three consequences that you’ll face for plagiarism, even if you are never found out, and ask yourself again if plagiarism truly is worthwhile. [Read more…] about Why Plagiarizing On Your Blog is Always a Bad Idea

The 3 Dumbest Ways to Get in Legal Trouble Online

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Arrest Image

Though the law may never fully catch up to the pace of innovation on the Internet, it certainly is trying and there are a lot of ways you can find yourself in legal trouble on the Web.

Many of the ways are obscure, complex and difficult to avoid. Is using that passage from a site a copyright infringement? Is that comment about another person defamation? Is the action you want to take a violation of a terms of service? These are often tough questions that can be difficult even for legal experts to answer.

But then there are the ways in which idiots find themselves getting in trouble online. Things that pretty much any sane, reasonable and intelligent human being would know to be a bad idea before even finishing the thought.

Yet, time and time again people fall victim to the most stupid and idiotic ways that they can get in trouble online.

So, for a bit of fun and education today, we’re going to look at three of the dumbest ways people seem to routinely get in trouble online. You might learn something, but if you do, you probably want to re-examine whether you want to be online or not.

After all, if you’re falling into these hazards, the Internet is likely just a great big disaster waiting to happen. [Read more…] about The 3 Dumbest Ways to Get in Legal Trouble Online

3 Grim Legal Realities on the Web

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Sad Puppy

One of the great things about the Internet is how it makes us feel. It can easily seem like the Web is a secure, anonymous and inviting place that enables you to either get in touch with your closest friends or reach out to an audience of millions.

The Internet is home to YouTube, the site where anyone can be a TV/movie star, Facebook, the world’s largest social structure ever created and Twitter, where instant feedback and updates is the norm.

The Internet can be an inviting place and, if you’re running a blog or other website, you’ve obviously felt that call and decided to to carve out your own corner of it.

But the warm and fuzzy feelings need to be mixed with a healthy dose of caution and concern. While the Internet can be a very inviting place and definitely has many great things going for it, it also is home to some pretty grim legal realities that you need to be aware.

To be clear, these aren’t meant to stop you from enjoying the Internet, but rather, to keep you from getting so caught up in what the Internet can seem like that you do something daft that lands you in trouble.

After all, the last thing anyone wants is to end up in real-world trouble because of something they did in the virtual one… [Read more…] about 3 Grim Legal Realities on the Web

What the Meltwater Case Could Mean for Bloggers

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meltwater-620-sizedLast month, a federal district judge in New York City handed down a controversial ruling in the case of Associated Press (AP) v. Meltwater.

The mammoth 91-page decision, a summary judgment in favor of the AP, was a crushing defeat for the news aggregation service Meltwater, which is left considering “options” after the decision was handed down.

But ever since the ruling was handed down there have been questions raised about what the broader implications of this ruling could be. After all, it’s not every day we get a fair use ruling on the issue of online news and aggregation, the impact, theoretically at least, could reach not only other aggregation services, but news search engines and even bloggers that write about news stories first reported by others.

So, what are the potential impacts for bloggers? To find out we first have to take a look at the background of the case, what the judge ruled and why.

On that note, let’s delve into the case itself and find out the issues that’s at the core of the dispute. [Read more…] about What the Meltwater Case Could Mean for Bloggers

3 Areas of Law We Have Not Begun to Touch

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Phantom Touch ImageCopyright, trademark, privacy and pornography. These are all issues that, while still very much unsettled, we’ve at least begun to address online.

While not all of the answers have been great, there are signs that the law is thinking about these issues and that the wheels of justice are grinding forward.

So while that may be small comfort, it’s important to remember that there are areas of the law that we either barely have addressed or have not addressed at all.

It’s in these spaces that the next frontier of Internet law may be hiding. These may well be the areas of law to become hot topics in the coming years and they could easily be the areas that will have huge impacts on you and your sites as they rise up.

On that note, here’s a look at the areas of law that we haven’t really begun to address, but most likely will have to soon. [Read more…] about 3 Areas of Law We Have Not Begun to Touch

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?

The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts

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Swim at Your Own Risk

Ideally, guest posts are great for both your site and for you as the webmaster. For the guest post author, it’s a way to expand their reach and talk directly to your audience. For you, it’s a way to take it a little easy one day, offer some variety for your readers and improve the discourse on your site.

However, like almost anything you do online, guest posting comes with a set of legal risks. For the author of the guest post, these risks are pretty clear, they’re the author of the post so they bear all of the usual risks that come with publishing anything online.

But what about the owner of the site? They didn’t write anything and are just accepting and publishing the works of someone else, do they have legal risks to worry about?

The answer, sadly, is yes. You can’t simply publish anything that someone hands you and expect that you face no potential liability or other consequences. Depending on the details of your guest post, you can be held accountable for what your guest authors publish. Fortunately, there are simple ways to mitigate that risk and prevent guest posts form causing you trouble down the road. [Read more…] about The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts