Intellectual Property on the Web: Free for All, or Free for None?

2Feb/10Off

Intellectual Property on the Web: Free for All, or Free for None?

As many of you may have noticed, my blog contains reposts of articles I find during my day on the web from select sites I frequent. My goal is to share the same content I read with those who share common interests. Every post that I make that does comes from a third party always begins with a link back to the source. I don't in any way try to take credit for someone else's work. However, it has been brought to my attention that some may see this as an issue. Here are some of the complaints I have seen (not on my blog personally, just in general):

Copying Articles in Their Entirety is Stealing!

I have heard it said that posting the entire article word for word is considered stealing. What some say should be done is you post the first couple of sentences (maybe about 120 words, give or take) and then a "Read More" link that links to the original author's site.

My Rebuttal

I have a hard time agreeing with this. Personally, as long as a link back to the original author exists somewhere on your post, I wouldn't have an issue with someone reposting an article I wrote. I only speak for myself on this. One thing as a designer I know, is that you don't want to have to make the viewer of your site click 50 different links to get to the content that their trying to view. More than 1 click (2 if your lucky), and the viewer is definitely bound to go on their merry way to find other content to read. Nobody wants to have to sift through links upon links to get to content. Plus, the original link is already in the post, I would believe that this would suffice. Thus, I am no lawyer, so I have no idea if this is true or not, I could be wrong. I think people let their personal view get in the way of what is right and what is wrong legally. A downside to the World Wide Web is that nothing you post on there is safe. If it is in the public domain, it is open to the Fair Use Act and will probably be reposted numerous times before you ever find out. It's impossible to track everyone who copies your content, and the same laws that apply to physical mediums do not always apply to web-driven content.

Hot Linking is Stealing Bandwidth!

Some would argue that when you hot-link to images hosted on another site's server, you are consuming that sites bandwidth without their explicit permission.

My Rebuttal

While morally it is probably to some extent not very polite to do this, I have a hard time with this on some levels. If someone is hot-linking to your image and claiming ownership of it, or have used your image in something they are promoting or making money off of, I think this is wrong, and probably is very much against the law. Is it illegal to hot-link to an image that is part of an article you are re-posting and giving the author/owner full credit for by linking back to their site? No. There is no law that says it is illegal to hot-link. As long as you are giving credit back to the owner/author, there is no legal issue. The issue is that of morals. As a designer, if I have a problem with someone using the bandwidth from my server when linking to my images on their site, I would block it on the server side. A designer should never think that the world should be polite enough to not do this; Designers should be pro-active in preventing it if they have a personal issue with this. So to summarize my personal opinion, if you give credit to the origin of the image, and the use of the image is for non-profit and not being used in a way that would go against the original creator's/user's preferences, then no. But, I will admit, it is probably more polite and better to ask for permission first just in case. As a designer, I would hate to find out somebody else was taking credit for a graphic I created, or using a graphic I made to make money.

An upside to hot-linking is SEO. It can be a good thing if the sites are driving your web sites position up in the search engines. Links that come from other sites to your own help to improve your Search Engine ranking. So do links that go from your site to others.

You also have to remember, the Fair Use Act allows for the reuse of your images, even if you don't agree with it at times.

Conclusion

So now you know what I know from both sides. I would like to open this topic to discussion. Maybe I am misinformed, or just not knowledgeable enough on the topic. So I pose the question to my readers. What is fair to you?

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Tagged as: Copyright, Graphic Design, Web Design Comments Off

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Lee Milthorpe
February 3rd, 2010 - 02:35

Hey Daniel,

Controversial!

I have to say that copying articles word for word from other sites IS stealing. Adding a link to the original source in my opinion just isn’t good enough. Those authors have spent time researching and writing posts, only for you to come along and use them for your own benefit without any effort whatsoever.

Also, duplicate content has a negative impact in the search engines so the link juice isn’t worth a thing, especially when it’s coming from a site with a PageRank of zero!

With that said, I’d like to kindly ask you to remove all the content you have taken from my blog.

Thanks.
Daniel
February 3rd, 2010 - 06:36

@Lee Milthorpe Thank you for your feedback. I hope you aren’t too upset, my intention is not to steal from you or anybody. While I don’t entirely agree with your Opinion (and seeing how I’m no expert in law, I may be wrong), I do respect it and have removed your content from my blog. As for my benefit, the only thing I am doing is trying to share this content with other designers to help them educate themselves. I’m not making a profit or gaining anything out of this. I do link back to your site, to your original article, in order to site my source. From now on, I will take the time to write my own review of your information and provide a trackback to your site.

@Miss Ruby Divine You commented the following on an article you asked me to remove, I didn’t want you to think I just deleted your comment, so I am copying and pasting it here (On Photoshop: Art or Artifice?):

“The article above was indeed taken from Smash and Peas. What you have failed to include is the name of the Author, myself, Ruby Divine. You have completely removed the information box of myself and my byline. As you may be aware, this is plagiarism. I would like you to remove this article immediately.

Sincerely,

Miss Ruby Divine”

I did not completely remove the information intentionally. I linked back to the original post. I understand that you and Mr. Milthorpe do not feel this is sufficient, therefore I have done as both of you have asked and removed your content. No, I am not aware that this is seen as plagiarism. As I have said before, by providing a link back to the article, I consider this citing my source, and I would think that is sufficient. If I have offended either one of you, I do apologize for it, and the content has been removed. I will take your advice going forward in all of my posts from now on.

With that said, I do find it rude that when someone see’s this type of thing, instead of politely requesting the poster to remove the content (as they may be ignorant to what is okay and what is not okay as things on the internet are not the same as they are when it comes to physical medium), they make assumptions and accuse the poster of intentionally stealing something or start insulting not knowing the poster’s original intention. I don’t feel that was done with you Miss Divine and Mr. Milthrope (excluding the little comment he made about my page rank, but that is irrelevent, seeing how I’m not even trying to do any SEO for this site), but I really do appreciate your input and you have educated me on people’s personal feelings on this topic.