Respect of copyrights
I don’t like that there is a lot of bloggers that don’t seem to be aware of - or choose to ignore - the copyrights rules on the internet. I guess they don’t think that they will be discovered.
I’m also quite annoyed by the fact that some people hotlink to our pictures on this blog (I can see that in our statistic software on the server) - stealing our bandwidth that we’re paying for. So I’ve begin to put up this picture for them instead:
I just change the real pictures name to something else and this one to the name they hotlink to. Quite embarrassing for them, but also informative.
I could have just changed the name of it, but I think that this way is more effective. After all, there are many people out there that is not even aware of what they’re doing. Now they get to know.
There are other ways to do it too, like the hotlink option in the cPanel at the webhost or directly in the .htaccess file, but I’ve had some problems to implement them and this works for now.
Recently I stumbled over some very good summarizing information about the copyrights at Godbit, that all bloggers should be aware of.
Rules of Thumb on the Internet:
(These are rough guidelines, but they’re good ones)
- If it’s on the internet, it’s copyrighted.
- If you didn’t originate it, you don’t own the copyright.
- When in doubt, ask for permission.
- Or be certain as to fair use (and cite the original author).
- Or look for works available under a creative commons license.
- Don’t infringe copyrights.
Read what more Godbit writes about Copyrights
Webmasterstop about hotlinking and cPanel
The Site Wizard about hotlinking and htacess
Our earlier post about Copyscape
NOTE: You’re welcome to download :-) this picture of mine if you want to use it yourself when being hotlinked.
