Thanks for plug Paul. Now about Malkin's pajamas....

Thanks for the kind words Paul. Still no word from MSNBC or Reuters though so Michelle might not have to break out the pajamas just yet.

If you have any indication of proprietary content identified...speaking of, you all should obtain and then display a Creative Commons License on your sites. (As should anyone with original content on a blog, particularly.)

Once you post that or even a Copyright notice, you can request credit (or whatever, payment if that's what you request in your statement) or else demand removal and retraction...

No attorney here, not hardly, just trying to encourage you to place some proprietary notice (you are the author of the content, or where noted at least) and what your requirements are as to reprint/use by anyone else.

If you don't include that on your content -- it's capitalism, remember? -- anyone/everyone who wants to use whatever they see, without seeing any restrictions, will use whatever they can. And they do, I assure you.

Often it's "reused" with tweaks and subtle modificaitons, but the concepts are usually always set into motion by one person and then copied by others. As long as it's friendly copying, fine, but when for-profit sites start using your work without credit and/or payment, it's very insulting. Just because.

Go credit your sites! Creative Commons Licenses, I suggested earlier because they are clearly stated as to whatever you select as your options and most people take them seriously. At least, it's a sort of standard for use of content on the web, is what I mean.

Even with them, however, you have to followup with sites/persons who will still persist in "copying" your content and republishing, and ask for either credit or retraction, in my experience. If they never respond, keep writing but ramp up the volume and make some demands. Because, the use of someone else's creative work without credit is theft. Hard core theft.

Not like no one noticed that they had to copy, save and host or edit, etc., what they "found." There's just no excuse for someone pilfering someone else's creative work without appropriate and/or required credit by the author.

If you don't include that on your content -- it's capitalism, remember? -- anyone/everyone who wants to use whatever they see, without seeing any restrictions, will use whatever they can.

That isn't exactly true. You automatically have a copyright in any original writing you publish on your blog. Nobody has a right to take it without crediting a source. Putting a little "c" with the circle around it (I don't know the HTML for the copyright symbol) just means you've registered your original work. That makes it easier to pursue violations of your copyright, but is not a pre-requisite.

While it is advisable to place a warning on your sight that unauthorized commercial uses of your work is prohibited, it is not necessary.

And let's not forget, there is something called "Fair Use" that allows copyrighted material to be copied and commented upon. Most reporting falls under this exception to the copyright laws. For instance, despite whatever symbols or warnings you put on your sight, I can copy whatever I want onto mine and then critique it and you can't do anything about it. That, unfortunately for you, is Fair Use. I cannot, however, claim your work as my own or make money off your unadulterated work without permission.

HTML for the copyright symbol [©] is &copy

You might put that in your index template to include it in the byline at the bottom of each post...

Michelle, my belle -- yeah.

If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
people die past the age of a hundred.
-- George Burns
Home Equity Loan http://www.home-equity-loan-x.com