Comments on: What Are the Rules For Sharing or Passing On Someone Else’s Blog Post or Article?

By: blogger

blogger — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:33:34 +0000

This information is incorrect, linking is fine, but copying and pasting the entire article is not. It’s not the same as ‘passing a magazine to someone else’ it’s as if you were photocopying and distributing the magazine to your entire town! Bloggers make their money from page views primarily, so if the content is being shared without people having to visit the actual blog, it is doing harm to the blogger.

Gone are the days where most people blog only for the sharing of information, most bloggers now also have to make an income to justify the enormous amount of time it takes to run a blog.

Linking, and a small excerpt (quote) of the article is great and usually encouraged, but full on copying and pasting a substantial portion of the article/post or copying the entire thing is illegal and unethical. If someone doesn’t mind if people copy and paste the article in full, they will note this.

By: Penny Trosclair

Penny Trosclair — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:05:11 +0000

I was told that you can’t copy and paste even a blog entry (doesn’t matter if you give a link back to the source) without violating copyright infringement. The person who told me this gave me this link- http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html and said that you could only summarize a blog entry and then give a link to the original. I am very confused! The person made mention to bloggers making money by how many people visit their blog (of course money would be the reason).
Can you please clarify if they’ve changed anything?

By: Bill Kaiser

Bill Kaiser — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 07:17:17 +0000

Hello Brent,

For those of us beginning bloggers, this was a big help! Thank You.

By: Marketing Darcy

Marketing Darcy — Sun, 16 May 2010 20:03:51 +0000

what about news paper or magazine content? can someone post there info on there blog without getting in trouble from the magazines?

By: brentriggs

brentriggs — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:36:45 +0000

Proper etiquette is to credit the source no matter whether an excerpt or a full piece. Typically a full article will come with an author written attribution they want included. For excerpts, a link to the full article is acceptable.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:52:57 +0000

I know it’s more original to perhaps include an excerpt of someone else’s blog, and then add value by commenting on it, but I’d like to understand the etiquette if I would like to simply use someone else’s entire post. In this scenario I am not passing it off as my own, but simply serving as a sort of syndicator.

In this case I’m thinking in the way the eZine articles are used, where the guidelines are that the post is used 100% as-is and at the bottom attribution is given to the writer.

For blog posts, I’ve seen people simply copy the other person’s post, then at the bottom say simply something like “via – [name of post included]” with the right link. Is this enough, or is more appropriate to do more in terms of a citation?

By: dymphna

dymphna — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:02:25 +0000

I have been wanting to know the answer to this!!! I did not want to offend someone due to lack of knowledge.

Thanks

By: brentriggs

brentriggs — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:53:41 +0000

If their blogs are completely public, I would say no. In those cases, if they have a problem with it, they can let you know, and you can say “sorry” and immediately remove the link. But when things are put up to the open public, linking to them is almost always welcome, and there is NOTHING legally wrong with it, period (even if they tell you “no”, you can still link legally, it’s just not good manners).

By: gardenia

gardenia — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:37:10 +0000

Brent, thanks for this post. a question similar to this one. I read several blogs of adoptive moms who are still waiting to bring their children home from Guat. I have thought about doing a post asking my readers pray for these families, and identifying those blogs and linking them in my post. That way, people might also check out those blogs and give those families support too. I do not know these waiting families, other than my reading of their blogs and commenting in their comments. Do you thingk I need to get their permissions to identify their blogs and link to them in my post? They are all public — not password protected.