Daily Blog Tips’ article, “Copyright Law: 12 Do’s and Don’ts”, is a great step-by-step list of the basic things you need to know about copyright law, especially when it comes to protecting and copyrighting your content, as well as using the content of others.

I really liked some of the items under the “Don’t” list:

7. Don’t assume that if you credit the author there is no copyright infringement: A lot of people wrongly think that if they credit the author of an article or image they are not violating the copyright law. You can only use copyrighted material if you have explicit permission from the author to do so (or if you make fair use of it, as explained before).

8. Don’t copy material just because it does not show a copyright message: The Copyright Law required a copyright notice to protect works until 1977. In 1978, however, the law changed and abolished the requirement for copyright notice. This means that every published work (be it on paper or digital media) automatically gets copyright protection, whether expressed with a notice or not.

9. Don’t equate Creative Commons with “free for grab”: While Creative Commons licenses are less restrictive then standard copyright they should not be interpreted a “free for grab”. In order to understand what you can or can not do with Creative Commons material you should check what kind of license it is using. Certain licenses will require you to credit the original author, while others will require that you release any modifications of the document under the same license.

If it is on the web, it is not free for the taking. Got it? Good.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.