Saturday, February 7, 2009

Questions?

House Finches 2-6-09 by Kathiesbirds


I have a question to ask of you, my fellow bloggers and I would really like some input. I have been reading a lot about some online programs like Copyscape and MyFreeCopyright.com. What I want to know is, are these programs necessary? Do I need to register my copyright for all these blog pages I have published? I thought blogger did this for us?

Do I need to publish a copyright notice on my blog?

Tell me what you think! Please!

*February Yard Bird Update: 10. Gilded Flicker

8 comments:

Ruth said...

"The Copyright Law required a copyright notice to protect works until 1977. In 1978, however, the law changed and abolished the requirement for copyright notice. This means that every published work (be it on paper or digital media) automatically gets copyright protection, whether expressed with a notice or not."

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/copyright-law-12-dos-and-donts/

bobbie said...

Ruth is right. I put a little notice on mine just because people are unaware of these things, and some occasionally help themselves. I don't really care if they do, so far as anything I write is concerned, but I would hate to have someone try to use one of my photos for profit. I don't care if they just want one to look at themselves, perhaps for a screen saver - not that I think many of mine are worthy of even that. But I have heard of some people having someone help themselves and try to profit from it. So I put on a reminder.

Kim said...

I am new to blogging so don't know anything about copyright law, but I wanted to tell you that I absolutely adore that picture!!

BirdingMaine said...

I love the photo and the feeder!

I place a copyright stamp on all of my images plus have copyright info embedded invisibly into the image itself. I can not believe how many people out there have stolen my images and passed them off as their own. These characters even crop out my copyright stamp.

Now when I find an image on a site that looks like mine, I have a program that reads the embedded info in the file to tell me if it is indeed mine.

Cheryl Ann said...

I use Copyscape myself. And, yes, I have tested it to see if my photos appear elsewhere. So far, no! It gives me some peace of mind! Copyscape is free. All my blogs have it.

denapple said...

The problem with any copyright violation is enforcement. What will you do if you find someone is using your photo? We are talking lawyers and $$$ here, folks. Big companies like Coca Cola can afford that, can you? Guess it might depend on how much money someone else is making with your photo. I'd love to have the money from the Angry Bluebird picture.

Celeste said...

Interesting question Kathie, unfortunately it is something I know nothing about but I was interested to read your followers comments.
I have to say that many of your photos are of such a high standard that there could well be a risk of other people using them, although Denapple does have a valid point about what would you do if you did discover it happening!
Certainly a complex issue with no easy answer.

Kathie Brown said...

Hey everyone, thanks for all this feedback. I went to the site Ruth mentioned and read all of it. Plus, I do believe Blogger (or Goggle)goes to bat for you if you can prove someone has copied your material and claimed it as their own. So, I suppose there is no way to totally protect your stuff, but I may decide to use Copyscape because it is free. I would like to think the world is a beter place than this, but it is foolish to be naive. Still, I want to be free to publish what I want to without fear of plagerism and I hope to God I am never guilty of it myself!