Thursday, September 25, 2008

Copyright Laws

Since I've started this blog I have been thinking about legal issues, such as how to protect my ideas and images from theft. I want to share my work, and ideas, but I am afraid I will be putting myself at risk. At the same time I want to make sure that I use other people's words
and images properly. 

Since I am a bit shady on copyright laws I decided to do some research. Looking on Google, I came across one of Lorelle VanFossen's articles on WordPress. She has a great article titled,  "What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content". VanFossen discusses how to discover if your content is being used improperly and how to deal with this situation. There is also more information on keeping a blog in her book "Blogging Tips".

Further searching brought up two interesting articles, "Copyright Information For Artists", and "To Watermark or Not To Watermark"on emptyeasel.com which provides more specific information in regards to posting artwork online.

Finally, Brad Templeton has two articles that give a bit more of an explanation as to what copyrights are, and how they work. In "A Brief Intro to Copyright" Templeton informs, "Under the Berne Copyright Convention... every creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form." Templeton explains even more in his article, "10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained", which is very helpful since I'm not sure I could handle a more involved explanation. 

After reading all of these articles, I am SO glad I simply jumped into blogging. I would be too frozen in fear to have ever started this project! There is so much more to blogging than I even realized, but I also think that it is alright to learn about these things as I go along. Hopefully this blog will see an evolution in content, design, and coherence as I continue to grow and evolve.  I am so grateful to Marissa Haedike for giving me the nudge/encouragement I needed.

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