The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Copyrights for You and Your Content Sources

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone I know I just recommended aggregating news stories from sources outside of your blog in my series on The Art of the Fan-Based Blog, and that search engines were your friend. They are. However, I cannot stress this enough, be extremely mindful of every single word or […]

How to Add MyFreeCopyright To Your WordPress Blog

404 Tech Support has just published step-by-step instructions on how to addMyFreeCopyright.com to your WordPress.com or WordPress blog. The directions are specific to WordPress.com, but will work for any blog or website. It’s also a prime example of how to use the WordPress Widget to add text to your sidebar. The code used in the […]

Copyright and Translation: Help Your Community Yourself

It is my copyright policy to not permit literal translation of my content into another language without permission. And in general, I rarely give permission. Whoa! Does this sound like it goes against Lorelle’s policy of open, transparent, fair, and equal communication and breaking down the language barriers? Nope. It is within my policies. Translation […]

More Information and Resources on Copyright Than You Can Imagine

Smashing Magazine offers “Copyright Explained: I May Copy It, Right?”, a mind staggering collection of more than you could ever imagine or want to know on copyrights, especially as it pertains to bloggers. I’m honored that they included my article, What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content, in their list. They’ve also included […]

Understanding GPL and Copyright in WordPress Community Podcast

With all the traveling I’ve been doing lately and knowing I would be driving through some wide areas without radio or cell phone, I uploaded the last few podcasts from the WordPress Community Podcast with Charles Stricklin and new co-host Aaron Brazell and had a great time catching up on what I’ve been missing. The […]

Copyright Law Tips from Daily Blog Tips

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: […]

Copyrights and the Blogger: Protect What is Yours

Blog Critics’ article “Copyright And The Blogger Syndicate” discusses the ongoing battle between blog syndication and social networking and copyright protection and sums it up beautifully with two instructions to all bloggers: 1. Protect your blog to begin with. How you go about this, depends largely on whether you’re a contributor to a larger site […]

Biggest Copyright Infringement in the World But Nobody Cares Enough

In an interesting news article on Yahoo News – Experts: Suit Raises Copyright Questions, a company in Philadelphia is suing for copyright infringement the non-profit, Internet Archive, developed to “preserve Web pages that will eventually be deleted or changed” for all time. They currently have more than 55 billion pages stored there. (I’d love to […]

Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements

I recently discussed your options and what to do if someone steals your content. Now, let’s look at how to find out if someone has stolen your content. There are various ways to find copyright infringements of your photographs and writings. Currently, there isn’t just one source, so check through these different services on a […]

Speak Out on the DMCA at the Copyright Office

The US Copyright Office wants to hear from you about the DMCA, reports Arstechnica. Starting on November 2, you can let the Copyright Office know how you feel about it. One of the provisions of the DMCA requires the US Copyright Office to conduct a review every three years to determine if it should make […]

Blog Exercises: Prepare for Summer

It’s Editorial Calender check-in and check up time. May is the shift from spring to summer. From blossoming flowers to green leafed trees casting shade, the weather is changing, bringing warmer days to the northern hemisphere and colder temperatures down under. For those of us living in the Pacific Northwestern United States, we are experiencing […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

Blog Exercises: Excerpts and Continue Reading

Encountered the front page of a blog where the posts ran on and on and on and on, stretching across the length of the page? Do you ever wish you had more control over the length of your posts on the front page of your site? This Blog Exercise explores the use of the “more” […]

Blog Exercises: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]