Your web site and marketing materials are protected by copyright.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property law that protects the authorship of original works of fiction, non-fiction, music and lyrics, poetry, plays and screenplays, computer software, and architecture. On your web site, copyright protects original text as well as original artwork, music, sound recordings.
Instant copyright: Just add ink
You own the copyright on your work as soon as you put it into a perceptible, tangible form. As soon as you jot it onto notepaper or type it up on a MS Word doc, the copyright is yours. It doesn’t …

You’ve probably heard that earlier this month the Federal Trade Commission released new rules regarding blog disclosures.  What should you look for if you regularly write on blogs and forums and you want to make sure that you are in compliance?

First ask yourself the following two questions:

• Do you use your blog, forum, or other social media accounts to write reviews?
• Do you receive anything for the reviews you write (for example, special rebates, free samples, or cash payments)?

If you do not write reviews, or if you use your own money to acquire the products that you review without receiving any other …

What is the Definition of Fair Use?

Fair use is a provision of United States’ copyright law that outlines the extent to which copyrighted work can be used or reproduced without seeking the permission of the copyright holder.  Generally speaking, fair use is only meant to cover the limited amount of duplication necessary for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

A more thorough definition can be found in Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 1, Paragrah 107

Room for Interpretation

As Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonja Sotomayor has repeatedly pointed out during her confirmation hearings, changes in technology and …

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to attend a highly informative panel hosted by Lyris Inc and moderated by Dianna Dilworth of DMNews. The speakers were Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and Lyris’s own David Fowler.

It would be impossible to summarize the whole of their webinar in a single blog entry, so for the next several weeks I will use my Thursday blog posts to hit the highlights.

Legal Standards for E-Mail

In 2003 the George …

This is a very interesting question, and one that is not as easy to answer as it might first seem.   What looks like a single question is in reality four.
1)     Is it possible to copy text from another website onto my own site?
2)     Is it legal for me to use text from another website on my own site?
3)     Is it ethical for me to use text from another website on my own site?
4)     Is it effective to copy text from another site onto my own site?
Is it possible to copy text from another site onto my own site?

The first question …