Technicalities, Legalities, Fatalities?

Published on November 18, 2004 By TaBooTenente In Blogging

I call this a failure on my part: an inability to scrounge up the authoritative rule book for blogging, or internet reporting, or journalism in general, or....

Okay, here are the questions:
1)Public Domain: Is there an official rule book?
2)If I want to post an article on my own website, and my source is a news article (presumably copyrighted), how do I document the source, and where?
3)On my website, may I link to an article on another website without express written consent? If yes, what are the rules? If no, then that sucks for me.
4)When a website other than my own, say, the New York Times, states "no material may be reproduced or retransmitted in part or whole..." how exactly does this restrict me? May I write something like, "Today, Blow Shmoe of the NY Times reported [whatever]" and then write my own article? May I link to Blow's article?
5)photos?
6)Thanks!

Comments

TaBooTenente

on Nov 18, 2004

Just re-posting, to see if anyone has any ideas.

citahellion

on Nov 18, 2004

TaBoo,

1) Public Domain, at this point, is basically anything published prior to about 1932. After that it starts getting murky. If it was published before 1986 and does not have a copyright notice on it, then it's probably public domain too. If it was published after 1986 then it is presumed to be copyrighted until proven otherwise.

1a) You didn't ask, but Fair Use is a very nebulous concept. A couple of sentences or a paragraph is almost always okay. a page might be okay. A chapter is almost always too much.

2) Ideally you would be able to reference the article headline, the date of publication, the author, and the page of the paper where the article appeared. E.g. "NYTimes, p. 1A, 'Obese people eat too much' by I. C. TheObvious."

3) Unless the author of the piece in question has expressly forbidden linking, it's considered okay to link to things. That is, unless the material being linked is proscribed in some way, such as linking to an unauthorized copy of a song. Then even simply linking may get you into trouble as a copyright infringement abettor. (This is bad interpretation of the law, in my opinion, but the precedent has been set.)

4) I think you can and should provide a link to your source material whenever possible. Certainly you can summarize and paraphrase other peoples' articles; that is standard data gathering, not even fair use. What you cannot do is cut and paste from the source into your own article.

5) If you took the photo, you can do what you want with it. If someone else took it, you need their permission to use it before you create a post containing it.

6) You're welcome.

TaBooTenente

on Nov 18, 2004

Thank you very much.

It's a strange world, internet reporting and blogging. Everywhere you look someone's posting something, and it's hard to know what to believe. I'd like to post somethings on a personal/public website, but I wasn't sure what I could use as sources for information.

Current Events reporting seems especially tricky. I can't be in Washington when Powell resigns, but I can read the NY Times. Is that enough of a source to work with? I guess if I reference them, and if I myself believe they are a reliable source, and I don't commandeer any material and represent it as if I had created it. Hmmm.

Thanks again (Insightful for you, if it means anything).

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