Copyright Issues - Copyright Violations

[Linda Buquet]

There are laws and a certain amount of unwritten etiquette that applies when you copy or quote an article someone else write. We can get in trouble when people steal other people's content and post it here, or quote too much without proper attribution, so we are tightening up and adding these guidelines we hope all will follow.

People here at the forum sometimes copy an entire article someone else wrote and try to make it sound like their own. Sometimes they only quote a large portion of someone else's article but don't give proper attribution.

Here are the rules about articles and copying/quoting parts of articles. If these guidelines are not followed either the entire post will be deleted, or it will be edited to be compliant.

1) Complete articles written by someone else may only be posted IF they are from an article directory or somewhere else and the article expressly gives reprint rights. With those rights there are always terms - typically that the author bio and a live link must be included.

So you must link to the original article so we can check the reprint rights, plus include the author bio and link or whatever the reprint terms specify.

2) If you are quoting a portion of an article, please only quote ONE paragraph and PUT IT IN QUOTES so it's obvious it's not something you wrote, but something you quoted. Then please add "read the rest here" and a live link to the source.
(Reminder, if the source is your own site or one you have a vested interest in, you can't link to it or mention the name of the site.