Blogger Could be Sued for Copyright Violations

News Type: Event — Seeded on Wed Dec 6, 2006 4:46 PM EST

Article Source: Fast Company

blogs, photography, artsvine, copyright, citizen-journalism, new-media, intellectual-property, digital-media, perez-hilton

Seeded by kymlee

As citizen media develops, it is no surprise that certain news-gathering bloggers will begin feeling the pressure of accountablility to properly crediting sources. To me this concept is Writing 101, even beyond the specific photo credit issues in the seeded blog post. Because digital media makes it possible to "rip" any image or a quote available online, it is that much more important that pioneers of citizen journalism respect copyrights by giving credit where credit is due.

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kymlee's Column, All of Newsvine
Groups: Artsvine, The Citizen Journalist
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3.7

{"commentId":418425,"authorDomain":"Nycam"}

Nycam

This has been fomenting for a while now. Interesting to see which path it takes.

{"commentId":418425,"threadId":"59777","contentId":"471498","authorDomain":"Nycam"}

4 votes

#1 - Fri Dec 8, 2006 2:20 PM EST

{"commentId":422336,"authorDomain":"Ardith"}

ArdithDeleted

{"commentId":422827,"authorDomain":"pwtenny"}

Paul William Tenny

I'd like to point out that the title of the fastcompany.com post and by relation this seed are entirely inaccurate. Blogger is not mentioned anywhere in either the post you link to, nor the original at the Post, so I assume what they meant was "Bloggers".

It's just a typographical error I'm sure, but it does matter. Blogger is the proper name of the blogging site that Google bought from Pyra labs, and in this context, the title says "(Google's) Blogger(.com) could be Sued for Copyright Violations". You might want to edit this seed and correct that, even if the other site doesn't.

Also, I'm pretty sure you are only supposed to seed directly to the article, not someplace that links to it.

Good find though.

{"commentId":422827,"threadId":"59777","contentId":"471498","authorDomain":"pwtenny"}

1 vote

#3 - Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:16 PM EST

{"commentId":422935,"authorDomain":"Ardith"}

ArdithDeleted

{"commentId":423167,"authorDomain":"pwtenny"}

Paul William Tenny

OK, Paul, I'm confused. Help me out here. When I clicked the link, I got to an article in a blog. That article then included two other links, which isn't uncommon. Yes, one of them was the original article, but I enjoyed reading the blogger's comments. Is that a bad thing? Help, oh help.

I'm just repeating what I read when I signed up, it said don't link to places that link to the article, just seed to the article itself. Am I the only person that read that stuff? Just trying to be helpful.

Has Google trademarked blogger? This is a general question, not related to Kymlee's seed. I don't see how they can restrict the use of "blogger" all over the 'net. Ooooh, complex stuff.

Pyra labs created Blogger in 1999, and they were near the first on the scene for hosted blog sites. If they are considered to have coined the term (and I think that is perfectly fair given how old Blogger is) then it can qualify as a de-facto trademark without registration, and is subject to protection, but I'm not really talking about that so much as reader confusion. As a Blogger user (and trust me, there are tons) my first thought was someone was talking about suing Google, and I thought it was a quick and easy change that would make things more clear. That's all.

Cheers.

{"commentId":423167,"threadId":"59777","contentId":"471498","authorDomain":"pwtenny"}

1 vote

#3.2 - Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:17 PM EST

{"commentId":424234,"authorDomain":"kymlee"}

kymlee

Paul, I really don't see anything wrong with linking to other articles as long as the blogger offers some original analysis. This is a very important part of what citizen media adds to the mass media community. I read lots of blogs as well as traditional news media and much of what bloggers (specifically those participating in citizen media) do is digest, analyze and editorialize about current events in the news. The linking process helps send readers to the source so they can read and digest both the blogger's opinion and the additional information in the original article.

I don't know what you are referring to as far as what you read when you signed up (for what?) but I took another look at the CoH and it does not indicate that seeding links from blogs that link to other articles is inappropriate. I am looking in the wrong place?

I think you really just exposed your nerdom picking on the appropriate use of the term Blogger (which many of us do quite often on Newsvine). When I read the headline, I did not think Google Blogger, I thought a blogger. If you read my teaser comment, I think it is quite obvious what the article is about. Are you suggesting that no one should use the term "Blogger" unless they are speaking specifically about Google Blogger? It's too late for that, just like it's to late for Band Aid and Xerox; what else are we going to call people using blog media as a medium?

And as an FYI, I always leave the titles of seeds as they are on the article unless its too long in which case I cut off a couple words and use and ellipsis.

{"commentId":424234,"threadId":"59777","contentId":"471498","authorDomain":"kymlee"}

1 vote

#3.3 - Tue Dec 12, 2006 2:09 PM EST

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"59777","isPrivate":false}

KYMLEE

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Blogger Could be Sued for Copyright Violations

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