Author Archive for Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey writes at Plagiarism Today, a site about plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues on the Web. He started Plagiarism Today about in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. Since then, he has started offering consulting services to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies. Jonathan is not a lawyer and none of the information he provides should be taken as legal advice.

When Fans and Artists Collide

May 12, 2008 | Filed Under Ethics, Features, Legal, copyright | Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, a fan of the British TV series Dr. Who was forced to take a portion of his site offline after receiving a cease and desist letter from the BBC. However, Mazzmatazz, the fan is question, was not posting clips onto YouTube or making pirated copies of DVDs, but rather, posting knitting patters […]

Copyright and Twitter

May 5, 2008 | Filed Under Features, Legal, Twitter, copyright | Leave a Comment

Every time a new technology comes along that aides communication, copyright inevitably becomes an issue with it, at least to some degree. From piano rolls to radios to televisions to the Web, every great technology has shifted the copyright landscape and has had its course altered, at least in some way, by those protections.
Twitter is […]

What Orphan Works Could Mean to Bloggers

April 28, 2008 | Filed Under Features, Legal, Multimedia, Photos, Podcasting, Videos, copyright | 1 Comment

The orphan works legislation, last seen in 2006, now has the attention of Congress again with two similar bills, one in the House and one in the Senate. These bills, should either of them pass, could have a drastic impact on copyright holders both within and outside of the United States.
But what should bloggers expect […]

Blogging Lessons For and From Journalism

April 21, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging, Ethics, Features, Journalism, New Media, News | 6 Comments

As the proud holder of a journalism degree, I am always looking for ways to connect what I’ve learned both in school and in previous jobs to my blogging.
The fact is that blogging and traditional news reporting are actually closer to one another than many would like to admit. They both involve many of the […]

The Shyftr Saga

April 14, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging, Features, Legal, Splogs | 8 Comments

Weekends are typically slow times for copyright news. With the courts closed and most Web hosts gone for 48 hours, very little usually happens.
However, this weekend was a definite exception. It saw a veritable blogstorm over the RSS aggregation service Shyftr and its republishing of RSS content. Some bloggers, such as Robert Scoble and Louis […]

Copyright Infringement: The Most Common Outcomes

April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Features, Legal, Splogs, copyright, plagiarism | 2 Comments

It seems that a large number of bloggers run their sites with very little thought about copyright law. Though they don’t plagiarize content or scrape feeds, they grab images, copy large blocks of text and embed media without much thought to the original author or whether their use is truly “fair use“.
It seems that many […]

How to Help Immunize Your Site Against Scraping

March 31, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging, Content Scraping, Features, Feedburner, Legal, SEO, copyright, plagiarism | 7 Comments

Scraping is one of the most annoying things that bloggers have to deal with. It can hurt their search engine ranking, cause confusion among readers and cause them to unwittingly help spammers line their pockets.
Nobody likes being scraped but it seems that some sites are able to survive it relatively unscathed while others are bumped […]

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News

Do You Tag Yourself?
May 16, 2008 | By Lorelle VanFossen | 2 Comments

Do you tag yourself? Honestly? No, this is not a game.
With everyone back on the tag versus categories versus tags bandwagon, have you checked to make sure you are tagging yourself?
Inside of Lorelle on WordPress is the tag attribute that turns “Lorelle on WordPress” into a tag.
<a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/" title="Lorelle on WordPress" rel="tag">Lorelle on WordPress</a>
When […]

A BIG Reason to Read a Pet’s Blog
May 16, 2008 | By Andrew G.R. | Leave a Comment

I’ve often taken a snarky approach when it comes to people who set up blogs for their pets. I barely want to read about humans’ mundane lives, let alone issues with litter and pooper scoopers. However, there might be a new reason to subscribe to Lucky, Fido or Buddy’s blog.
Animals’ ability to prognosticate […]

Yahoo Nabs Safari Plugin Inquisitor
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

Inquisitor is a cool plugin for Safari, and now Yahoo owns it. The developer, David Watanabe, won’t be joining Yahoo, but will continue the development.
I look forward to assisting Yahoo! in refining and extending the Inquisitor user experience beyond where it is today. I truly believe that Inquisitor and its users can only benefit, both […]

YouTube Gives You Insight
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | 1 Comment

Now you can get some more statistics for your YouTube videos, with the recently launched Insight tool, available in your YouTube account (under Manage my Videos, which is probably temporary). The new stats feature is described like this by Tracy Chan, YouTube product manager:
For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in […]

Google the New Number 1 in the US
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

I thought they were already, but obviously not so. Google has been the leading search engine, but overall Yahoo is the most popular web site according to ComScore’s rankings. No more though, according to an AP report:
According to comScore, Google’s unique U.S. audience in April was 141.1 million, an 18 percent increase from the same […]

Blogging from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

Stephanie Stockman is a NASA contractor working at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which is cool by itself. What’s even cooler is that she’s blogging it, talking about rocketships in voice and text, as well as posting photos, something every space nerd should follow for sure. Her blog is Geosteph, which incidentally is her Twitter […]