I’m trying to wrap my brain around the ideas of copyright and intellectual property and the internet. Obviously, if I take someone else’s words and imply that that they are my thoughts and my words (plagiarism), I am at least lying, if not stealing. But what if I take your whole editorial or news article that is available on the internet, and I post it on my blog or website, attributing authorship to you? Is this plagiarism? No, I’m not claiming to have written what someone else wrote. Is it a violation of copyright? It would be if I posted a chapter of your (print) book, wouldn’t it? I don’t actually know how the copyright laws stand right now in this area. Then, there’s the matter of images. If an image is sitting on your site and I link to it in my post, I understand that I’m doing something rude having to do with “using up bandwidth”–whatever that means. But is it wrong to take your picture? How does anyone know what images are fair game and which are not? In the post below, I linked to a photograph of Billy Joel from the website of a major music company? Is this a problem? Is this huge company really worried about bandwidth? Or is that like stealing pencils from work–they’ll never miss it is no justification. Are photographs and paragraphs posted on the internet really private property anymore? When you put it on the internet, aren’t you saying, “Here, guys, I want to share this with the world?”
Then, again, if I posted a photo of myself or one of my family members, and someone took it and messed with it and sold it for profit somehow, I would feel definitely violated. I assume there are laws against this sort of thing. Are the laws enforceable? What if someone takes my words, messes with them a bit, and sells them? (Not that I’ve ever said anything profound enough to be stolen) What about lesson plans I find on the internet? I figure that if they’re on the net, again someone must have wanted someone else to get some benefit from them. Hoqwever, I may get ideas from lots of places–websites, books, other people–then put it all together and write my own book or curriculum. What if I post this conglomeration of ideas on the internet? Am I plagiarizing if I don’t even know where most of the ideas came from? I think the internet has made this whole area quite complicated, and I’m not sure where to draw the lines. And I haven’t even discussed “file-swapping”–mostly because I don’t really understand what the heck it is. Anybody out there got any ideas on this subject?