The threat of infringement in the blogosphere is a growing problem, with more and more bloggers unknowingly infringing on copyright it is important to know just what copyright infringement is.

What is copyright infringement?

"Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it."

Giving credit to your source does not take the place of requesting permission to use material on your blog. Without requesting permission you are infringing on that authors copyright.

With regards to posting articles from national news outlets on your blog in their full entirety, posting the first paragraph, first few sentences, or a quote from the article is fine, but posting the full article without permission from the source is a copyright violation.

Having been the victim of copyright infringement and having helped several bloggers when their work has been infringed upon I ask all bloggers to kindly request permission before you copy anything from anyone's blog. It is only common curtsy.

Just because you cite the source does not give you permission to copy. Everyone needs to understand that. While it is nice that you found their content informative enough to blog about it; it is not nice to just copy it without asking. You're welcome to quote a few lines and link to the full post, but you are not welcome to copy the full post without permission.

While many may not be aware that they are infringing on copyright it is important to know what it is and follow the steps to prevent it.

To put it simply, copyright infringement hurts everyone. It hurts the blogger who took time to write an informative post and it hurts the one doing the copying.

Ask before you take.

Rose DesRochers

Visit my blog at Rose DesRochers- World Outside My Window