Poetry Friday: Copy What?

I worry
about

copyright.

Do I have 
permission
to post an entire work, a photograph, a painting by
a poet? A lyricist? An artist?
Public domain? What's that?
Fair Use? Who's she?
Is Intellectual Property
really that smart?

Copyright resources
abound.

There's the Cardinal. 
Copyright & Fair Use at the Stanford University Libraries.
And Gov.
US Copyright Office at the Library of Congress
Go, Gophers.
Understanding Fair Use at the University of Minnesota Libraries.
Plus Eff.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers.
Then CC.
Creative Commons.
Not to mention
Google.
Blogger copyright tips.

A college is even offering
a free course on
copyright, but I missed
the deadline.

Maybe next time?

Comments

[tanita]

Oh, I hear ya. I worry about that, too; to the point where I don't often post whole poems anymore. I also think that from unpublished poets, whose work is otherwise hard to find, it is a kind of PR. On the other hand, I respect people needing more than attribution - and even part of a poem is better than none...

But I like your way of putting the info out in blank verse. ☺

[Susan T.]

Tanita, it's tricky, isn't it? I had to double-check a couple of sources to make sure what I was doing with the Twitter stuff last week was kosher. There's a local-news blogger around here who runs other people's photos all the time (with attribution but without permission) and it drives me crazy.

To call the above "blank verse" is kind! Thank you.

[Michelle]

Love the poem! It is a can of worms, isn't it? Somebody recently started following my blog. I checked out theirs, only to see that they had used one of my photos without attribution (much less permission). I guess I should've said something, but I just wrote it off to a new blogger who didn't know any better and took it as a compliment. But, of course, I'm not trying to make my living this way so I can be more generous.

[Susan T.]

Michelle, keep an eye on that blog! People do lift stuff and use it. And your photos are so beautiful! Argh.

Thanks for the nice words about the copyright poem. Ha. The Harvard course--the online free one--said you'd need about 8 hours a week to devote to it. I guess it's okay that it was full!

[Mary Lee]

Thanks for the links.

I count this as a success: I shared with my class a found poem I wrote using text from LIFE OF PI. First thing Ian asked was, "Isn't that plagiarism?" So we talked about my attribution and talked about another form of found poetry which involves taking someone else's words and adding to/subtracting from to make something entirely new. That it occurred to him. That was the success. Hopefully the whole class absorbed our discussion.

[Susan T.]

Yes! Success! That's great that a kiddo was thinking about that.

[Cynthia]

I Love your poems a few posts back. I tried to comment but it was closed.

I'd be coming back for sure.- Cynthia

[Susan]

Thank you, Cynthia. And thanks for letting me know about the closed comments. That was a mistake, and I fixed it. I am hoping to get back to regular blogging soon.