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Rob Trahan (205)
Rob Trahan
SearchWarp.com

Associated Press to Charge For Quoting Articles Online

Posted Monday, August 03, 2009 (97 days 10 hours ago.) Viewed 1,387 times.

Quoting and linking has become common practice online. You can peruse any blog today and find snippets of someone else's work along with a link to the work. Until recently there have been no worries of copyright repercussions.

If the Associated Press has its way, there will.

The AP, for those who do not know, is the largest US source of syndicated news. If you're reading, watching, listening to a news story, there's a good chance the AP had something to do with it. If you use a news aggregator, the majority of the articles listed are from the AP. It's huge.

The New York Times reported recently that the AP has a new plan to find where anyone uses their material online and charge them for it. According to Mashable.com, the AP has signed a deal with iCopyright to charge for use of its articles if you quote 5 words or more.

You read that correctly. If you quote 5 words from an AP article, you will be charged $12.50. The price rises with the word count, up to $100 for 250 words or more. And it doesn't just apply to those obtaining permission and quoting legitimately. If you copy and paste from an AP article and they find out, they will send you a bill. And they will expect to be paid in full.

The Mashable post goes on to debate the merits of the AP's plan, and you are welcome to in the comments if you'd like. This article is simply a reminder that all online content is owned by someone and different owners treat their property differently. When quoting or copying material, be sure to obtain permission from the author first and always cite your source.

        Comments (11)

Everything You Need To Know About Copyright and Your Article

Posted Thursday, October 16, 2008 (1 year 22 days ago.) Viewed 3,444 times.

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9

Despite even God's admission that there is nothing new, that everything is just a rehashing of something else, there are still rules by which we must abide when creating. This includes writing articles, like the one you are reading right now.

The easy way for me to write this article would be for me to Google the topic, find someone else's writings and post them as mine. Or if I wanted to be sure I sounded better, smarter and more insightful than I really am, I would certainly go find someone better than me and pass off his article as my own. If I'm looking for more readers, I may go find something popular and copy and paste.

The problem with all of these, of course, is they are all illegal. In fact, a lot of what happens online is, at best, unethical. YouTube got into a lot of trouble a while back for hosting videos that users posted without the owners' permission. "Google Image Search" has become synonymous with stock photography. And we won't even get into email forwards!

Here are a few things to remember when writing your next article. It's one thing to put a new spin on an old idea; it's something else completely to claim that idea is your own.

General Rules
  • Everything online is owned by someone. If you start with that, you'll be pretty safe. While it is true that some people are willing to share, the majority of internet "land owners" are proud of their stuff and probably don't want you to have it.
  • Cite, give credit and drop names. If you do obtain permission to use a person's work, give them credit for it. Not only is it the right and legal thing to do, but it saves you from looking like a fool. For example, imagine that you open a restaurant and want to serve soda. You come to an agreement with the Coca Cola company to serve Coke. What would people think if you changed the name to "Your Name" cola and tried to serve it? Bottom line, if you use someone's stuff, with their permission, give them credit for it.
  • Does it have to be registered with the Copyright office to be covered under Copyright law? No, it doesn't. As soon as something is created, whether it is written, sung played or photographed, that thing becomes the property of its creator and covered by Copyright law. The creator may do with it as he pleases, including transferring ownership to someone else. Anything you see online, whether it has the © or not, is owned by someone.
Rules for the written word
  • It's OK to quote. There's nothing wrong with quoting someone if it supports what you are writing, as long as you attribute the quote correctly. A quote is a piece of what someone said, wrote, pantomimed. It is NOT the entire thing. That's stealing. We have heard of instances where the Associated Press has sued writers for copyright infringement over as little as 9 consecutive identical words that were used without permission. This has become much more common recently.
  • What about well known anonymous writings? My first suggestion is to make sure the author really is unknown. How many people thought "There's nothing new under the sun" was anonymous? If the author of a story, anecdote, writing is truly unknown, then there are no laws against using it. But keep in mind the Coke example. If you heard a good story that you want to share, chances are someone else heard it too. When you try to portray someone else's stuff as your own, even if you don't know who the someone is, you will get found out sooner or later.
  • Reprint Rights. If someone gives reprint rights to his writing, he is not giving permission to attach your name to it. He is simply giving permission to reprint what he wrote some place else. It's still his writing.
Rules for online images
  • Google Image Search. Google has provided a great opportunity to steal someone else's work. I'm sure that was not their intent, but it has certainly become the outcome. And in the interest of full disclosure, I used to steal images using the Google Image Search too. Until I found out it was illegal. Here's an example. A friend of a friend owns an IT company and a few years ago created a web site to promote his company. He found the perfect image on Google to use on his home page. Recently, a collections company contacted him to say he owed them $4000 for use of the image for the years it was on his site.
  • Images from news and other sites. Most news sites either use their own photographers to take the pictures they display, or they contract with a wire service, like the Associated Press. News organizations pay companies like the AP a lot of money to use their images and stories. You are not allowed to take it from the news site and use it for free. Doesn't work that way. The same goes for images on other sites. They are either owned by the owner of that site or, hopefully, used with permission. To include them in your article, you need permission as well.
  • Logos and artwork. This one is a little trickier. Basically, it comes down to usage. There are times when you can use a company's logo or name as an illustration or teaching aid. It is generally not acceptable, however, to use it to promote you or something you might be selling without permission of the company. Your best bet is to always get permission or just don't use it.
The bottom line
Companies are cracking down and becoming very aggressive on infringement issues. Be very aware and very careful. Recently new systems have come online making it simple to detect copied images or text across the entire Internet.
 
The writers at SearchWarp are a talented, creative group of people. I know we all have the ability to produce great work without having to "borrow" from someone else. Just keep these few things in mind when you write and you'll be in good shape.

After all, someone once said, "Neither a borrower or a lender be."
(That was Polonius from Shakespeare's Hamlet)

        Comments (18)

Help Wanted: Pranks and Practical Jokes

Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (1 year 73 days ago.) Viewed 118 times.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and it's time to call in the reinforcements. I'm pretty sure someone famous once said that.

I have a confession to make regarding the current Pranks & Practical Jokes Contest. It is with purely selfish motives that I suggested it. I'm not a naturally vindictive person, but when you work for people who live and breathe practical jokes it's prank or be pranked. My bosses (Bruce and Jean, for those who know them) have gotten my wife and me three times now and we haven't so much as threatened to get them back yet. That's where you guys come in.

Once you see the egregious horrors that have befallen the poor Trahans at the hands of their insidious bosses, your heart will pour out through your keyboard and you will happily come to our rescue.

It all started shortly after my wife began her employment at SearchWarp.com. She is a (slight) worrier by nature and constantly checks on the site to make sure it is still attracting readers. One day, Bruce led her to believe that the site had completely crashed. For an entire day she was convinced that she wouldn't have a job and that her friends were doomed forever. The next day, everything was back to normal and she was left to wonder what had happened. It turns out that Bruce forgot to tell her it was a prank. For weeks she wondered what had happened and whether or not it would happen again. It finally slipped that Bruce had played a joke on her. The first of many, as we would later find out.

We are Apple fans at the Trahan house. I always swore that we would never have a PC in our home. When Laura began working for SearchWarp, she needed to do some of her work on a PC. I begrudgingly let her bring one of the company laptops into the house, thus befouling it forever. When the screen shorted out she called Bruce and Jean and said it wasn't working. they said, "No problem, we have another one for you!" When we got it home and out of the carrying case, we found out it was a One Laptop Per Child computer. Have you seen these? they're little plastic things that look like Speak 'N Spells. We couldn't even figure out how to open the thing!

The final straw was the Annoy-A-Tron. It's a small electronic device that emits a variety of high pitched sounds randomly. Bruce snuck into my office at my second job and hid it next to my recently upgraded computer. I thought there was a defect in my high dollar machine. Of course, I just chalked it up to a typical inferior PC. It wasn't until a few days (of beeps and chirps) later that Bruce confessed.

So there it is. As you can plainly see, no simple cellophane-on-the-toilet gag will be vengeance enough. Forget the vaseline on the door knob. We need something grand. Something like a fake secret mission from the CIA. Frankly, we need ideas. And thus, a contest was born.

Here's your last call, your last chance. After tomorrow we pick a winner. I wish I could say I will use the ideas from the winning article in my revenge, but then Bruce and Jean would know what was coming. The more ideas I get, the more they will have to prepare for. They can't possibly be ready for everything, right?

You have 24 hours to submit your best pranks or practical jokes. Write, write, write. Then submit to the Entertainment/Humor category before tomorrow evening. Who knows, maybe you'll even win fabulous cash and prizes!

        Comments (1)

  


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