by Bonnie Cehovet
I recently had an interesting exchange of thought with Catherine Chapman, owner of the Tarot Elements blog, Tarot reader and writer. We were discussing the best ways to protect intellectual property on the Internet – both writing and images. My first thought was that this was not an unusual conversation. Both Catherine and I are Tarot professionals, with work up on the Internet. Her blog is a new and expanding one, including her own artwork and teachings, as well as reviews and other articles.
My thought was that almost everyone I know has had this happen at some point in time. My sister, a professional massage therapist, has an extensive Internet site. On more than one occasion she has had parts of her site (at one time – the entire site!) stolen and placed under someone else’s name. Interestingly eough, there is a name for having the use of all or part of your website used by someone else – it is called “website hijacking”. I have had parts of my site, and parts of my reviews/articles appear on other people’s sites, under their name. I was not happy!
Plagiarism is a given – it will happen. What we need to know is what to do about it. We have come a long ways from the time when a “link back” was sufficient. As artists and writers, we deserve full credit and compensation for our work. It should not be used without compensation to draw traffic to someone else’s site.
Reproduced with the kind permission of Bonnie Cehovet
© October 2009 Bonnie Cehovet
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you been affected by copyright infringement ? It’s not always easy to find the original author/artist of a piece of work, how do you think that should be handled? What do you think is fair in using other people’s work? Is a link back to their website or blog sufficient? There are lots of questions in what is seemingly a gray area to most – I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you for this post. Just last night, I found out through https://fairshare.attributor.com/ that a website had been using at least 10 of my recent posts between last month and this month without any credit to me. A friend helped me google and research how to respond to such blatant plagiarism.
A bit about FairShare. They find your content on throughout the web, and payment requests are sent to websites where your full content is copied without credit to you. I mainly use it to monitor where my content is being used. Before last night, each website/blog that’s borrowed my content has properly credited me and added a link to my blog site.
It’s great to have all this information in one page. Thank you!
Hi Jan,
Thank you for your comment. Thank you for sharing such valuable information – I’m glad you managed to sort your issue out. I’ve seen my work pop up on ‘harvesting’ sites, but fortunately there has always been a link.
Do you include a copyright on each post now? I plan on having my site fully copyrighted by the end of the week – a task in itself when I think about how many graphics I’ve made…..
This is something that needed addressing though, for all of us as certainly within the networking community that we are part of, most of us are bloggers, but all of us are producing a large amount of online work each week – it makes sense to protect it.
Jan -
I am sorry to hear about your material wandering as it did. Well, wandering is too nice a word. Just because people link back does not make it an okay thing to do. They are in essence building their personal/professional sites on other people’s intellectual material.
I appreciate the link to Fair Share – I had not heard of them.
Blessings,
Bonnie
Hi Catherine,
Stealing property (intellectual or material) has never been a topic to me… My education interdicts me to take things from others without asking for their permission
. For this reason I try to find out who the owner of a spread f.i. is, in order to contact her or him personally to get the permit to publish it (naming and linking is quite natural!).
But it occurred once that I found some of my ideas elsewhere without source citation. A strange feeling that left a bad taste in my mouth.
A friend recommended me to copyright my graphics. What I do now. Especially graphics are easy to copy and paste. So: better you include your © or watermark them!
I hope your intellectual property will be “handled with care”.
Your blog is such a gain for me!
Warm wishes,
Phine
Hi Phine,
Thank you for your comment. Since my conversation with Bonnie over copyright began, I’ve been adding the little © as I write new posts. I hope, by the end of the coming week, to have fully copyrighted my blog, every image, every piece of written work, and, I have a page in draft that I will publish regarding the copyright of my work and how, if people want to use my work as a resource, they can contact me. I’m not an unreasonable woman, as you know personally, but I think it’s in everyone’s interests to protect their work. Not everyone is as polite and considerate as you when it comes to reproducing work
I hope you sorted out your own copyright issue there – Bonnie’s article is a very rich resource of information that is of great use to everyone who produces online work.
Phine -
Whenever I find something interesting in an unnamed source, I try to find the author (by placing key phrases in Google and searching them). If I cannot locate the primary source, I may still use the idea, but I will indicate that I could not locate the primary source, and that if anyone knows what it is, to please contact me. At the least, I feel better about using the material!
Blessings,
Bonnie
I think, as mooted above, the issue is “clear”, if one has a personal sense of morality re. plagiarising the work of others. But then I also see TAROT as inherently replete with the potential for loopholes and “personal opinion”.
Is an RWS clone REALLY original (intellectual property)? Is OUR (closer to my heart) “research” into Elemental Diginities, totally without precedent? What of swingeing CORPORATE copyright (arbitrarily?) slapped onto work of deceased Tarot “artists executantes”, and [IMO] BLOCKING software development?
We should all fight iniquity, but perhaps avoid being TOO precious? Perhaps the real solution is to be really original and far ahead of the competition? I am always more atttracted by commercial (sic) Tarot Websites that share SOME of the originator’s knowledge for FREE – Heck, I might even then BUY something.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comment. I think what most of us seek to protect is our own personal written work and certainly in my own case, artwork and graphics I produce myself to illustrate my tutorials and posts.
Certainly an RWS clone is based on the original, but it still honours the original. There are many gray areas, from images used on the web, to quotes. The latter though in general, are verbal first – how do you copyright that?
The question also remains, did the creator wish to copyright their work? A lot of people put their work, their quotes and ideas into the public domain and hope to see it shared and/or developed. It seems to me that we need to make the distinction as to what is acceptable to use and what isn’t. Is a link to the originating site enough? Did that site in fact produce the item or artwork for the first time? How can we be sure?
Being ahead of the competition will only work for a time, I feel, before the rest catch up and ultimately, somewhere along the line, your work will end up earning someone else money for the effort of a little copy and pasting.
It certainly is a gray area, but manner are manners regardless – and don’t they seem to be missing these days!
This is a great post by Bonnie Cehovet and will always be a hot topic among bloggers and people who share content on the Internet.
Have any of you used Creative Commons badge resource which allows you to select areas that you are willing and willing not to share? I added a badge to my blog’s footer as follows:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
I have mixed feelings about adding/seeing © on every post/article on a blog; images are different and should have © or watermark credit. However, at the very least, a © copyright notice should be added to the site footer or sidebar and even have a designated landing page explaining how it relates to the site.
The Tarot Channel has a very clear copyright notice on the sidebar of the blog, and its something that could be modeled after.
Great post!
- Nicole
I am spending most of my time in blogging and it would be unfair to me if somebody will steal my articles and ideas. Actually one of my blog sites has an image download recorded without my permission.
In today’s technology, are there any softwares that can trace if somebody has copy or stolen your works without your permission and without one by one or personally checking the World Wide Web?
Hi Crazyhorse – thank you for your comment. I don’t know of any software that can track your work, written or image. However, with certain image editing software, you can add a watermark to your image or even add a Copyright symbol with your blog name to it.
It’s difficult to keep control of, once you hit the publish button, your work is out there. I even had ‘right-click’ disabled on my site and my work was taken through the RSS feeder. I was fortunate enough to be able to sort my problem out, though I’m sure the day will come that I won’t be able to. Should anyone want to take my work and call it their own, I hope and trust that my work is distinctive enough to be recognised by my readers, and that it will always come back to me eventually.
Thank you for stopping by – I popped over to your blog and had a terrific time there, it was great fun!
!!!! Catherine Nice Place you have Here, Nice photo too …`,;-D
If I may, Im Going To Introduce an Electrifying Element Into this Conversation for everyone Before & aFter my little lightning bolt…
lets strike At the heart of it,
1)people want what they desire because it Moves them Emotionally. period.
2) We’re all adults Knowing right from wrong,” should’s’” from “mustn’ts” or at the very least desirable from Undesirable; and all of this gets vaporized by the emotion of desire “in the moment …”
So your putting a huge Piece Of Chocolate cake on the coffee table 10 minutes before your teen daughters favorite shows come on and you leave the house leaving a note behind that says, “don’t eat this, call me for permission even though i might say no if you can get me on my cell phone right away. if not then you will have to wait to be possibly told no…. if i was the teen i would eat the cake & say the wind from the door blew the note under the entertainment center. (Not really… just punctuating there)…
Stealing is a childish short-sighted selfish Behavior so ..
What If You Reinforce The Behavior That You Desire With A Reward?
What would you want to receive for taking the high road? …think Stimulus/Response-
-An Actual Cyber-Valuable desirable “reward”: I.e. “Hall Of Fame” conduct Trust Recognition & Recommendation seal by From you for that behavior wether you say yes or not.
-Near Immediate Response turn around
-etc etc, what else would be the ideal outcome if you were asking permission….
these are just examples to get the readers thinking…
Im sure i must be spamming now… `,;-o
Oh one last thing.. If your mindset is attacking the the distinctions i presented above instead of launching forward from this principle with your own new possibilities or whatever other positive responses are possible, your wining in unison with a reactive collective waiting to be handed a solution. But that doesn’t sound like anyone who would hang out in here. Again Nice website…Now I Know Im spamming. sorry Catherine.. i was inspired to connect & contribute. Happy 2010 you Guys
Zues
P.s. Whats with the little happyface in the bottom righthand corner of this white field?
`,;-D sorry Bonnie.. i leapt before i looked at your name! woe is me. siiigh