I notice that a lot of fashion blogs will use the same photo on a given day when blogging about the same subject, for instance, a new or wacky product.

Are these photos kind of public domain since they are news-worthy? Or do you contact the owner of the blog you found it on to see if they mind if you use the photo?  Or do you have to contact the original maker of the photo - the company that put out the product?

I definitely need to be clear on this since I write a fashion blog & a photo is worth a bazillion words! :)

 Thanks all!

 I always provide a link or a referene. If you quote someone, use quotes and attribute it to them. It's very similar to journalism.

Ramen Noodles, Rent and Resumes

Creatively Self-Employed

This morning I found one of my photos from my Flickr stream on a blog I sometimes read. No credit, no link back. I emailed the blogger but he hasn't gotten back to me. I have the feeling he might not.

Now, knowing that he would have had to go through Flickr to get the photo, and he didn't use the "blog this" option, this is wrong on many levels, right? Should I be doing more than just just emailing "Hey, you know, I took that picture. You might want to put my name on it?"

Available Light & Five Dollar Radio

Plagerism is a real problem online. Mostly it's ignorance, folks don't know any better. But honestly, most plagerisers DO know better and do it anyway. Unfortunately there's really no way to prevent it.

Unless you are a huge corporation looking to protect it's trademark or copyright (and able to pay for it), it's not worth going after the plagerizers (financially). There is no governing body, per se, that you can appeal to. When it comes to legal action, it depends on your country of origin, the country of origin that the plagerizer lives in and the country the website's physical address exists in (the hosting company's physical address). If you can even track down one of those, it's still a real pain in the ... to get a resolution. Hopefully the hosting company complies with complaints over copyright. Maybe they follow up, maybe they don't, and maybe they don't even care. 

My advise is to not stress over it too much. And a bit of peace of mind is that Google *hates* duplicate content. All that matters is the place that content was orignally posted (first showed up on the web). That's who really gets the credit. So by all means, post on your own site about any plagerizers of your own content. They will eventually get the idea that they had better give credit where it is due, or remove it. You won't have to do anything else. Someone else will do it for you.

For what its worth, I most certainly do give credit to photos or excerpts that I use from other sources. It's common courtesy, after all.

Warm Regards,

Shannon

Grumpy-kitty.com

It is never okay to take someone's entire post and re-post it on your blog. This is wrong even if you do give credit.  It is a violation of copyright law.  Always simply mention the article or provide a snippet of the article and link back to the owner. It is just good Kharma anyway.

Latoicha Givens

www.luxetips.com, Every Woman Deserves to Live the Luxe Life!

www.phillipsgivenslaw.com, Intellectual Property 101

I think the best way to make sure you do the right thing is to ALWAYS contact the person if you are using something off of their blog. 

And NEVER just copy the whole post/blog and use it on your own. 

Lindsay

www.glamoroushousewife.com

Just to be on the safe side, I summarize rather than quote, and of course link, link, link. I know you can quote a few lines from a book when writing a review.

On a personal note: If someone quotes me, credits me, and links back, I'm fine with that (in fact, I'd appreciate the link), but wholesale lifting of ones content is wrong under any circumstances.

Since there are no hard-and-fast copyright rules governing blogging (and lots of people don't quite understand Creative Commons) bloggers operate on something like an honor system. Here are the basics:

If you're quoting someone or excerpting something from their blog, always give a link. This is like referencing source material. And, it makes friends...

If you found a link on someone's site to something they wrote about, and you want to write about it, go ahead--and then give them some credit at the bottom, such as saying via (link to the blog) This shows that you're acknowledging the place you found the link...and it makes friends....

Never outright take someone's *entire* post! Even if you link to it, taking an entire post could screw up any links going to that blog. and that's something you really *don't* want to do because it doesn't make friends! (actually, it'll just make lots of folks pissed at you, and cast aspersions on your credibility as a blogger.)

hope that helps :-)

Tish Grier
blogger/consultant/writer
currently with Assignment Zero--blogging at
the Constant Observer and Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams

If I'm quoting from someone else's blog (which I have often done) I'll only copy and paste a portion, and I usually put it as an indented block so it's obvious the text is different/separate to the rest of my post. I always link back to the blog it came from - when you do that they will be notified of that in their blogging system anyway.

Kathie M. Thomas,
Business & personal interest blogs
Listed in the Top 100 Aussie Blogs list
http://www.kathiethomas.com/blogs.htm

If I didn't write it, I credit it. On a blog or in a term paper (excuse me for being a bit tough on the subject), using someone else's words as one's own is, well, plagiarism. To make matters thorny, plagiarism is a legal term. Obviously, no one is likely to sue over a quick cut & paste from this blog to that, this forum to that; end of the day, it remains dishonest, in my view.

With all the words we have at our disposal, there's just no need to use someone else's. Credit and Link. Nice of you to be concerned.