Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Cross Posting, Copyright, and Relevance

Cross Posting
If you have your own web site, please do not cross post material from that site to NewGathering. If you have something on your own site that you believe is of interest to readers here, you can write a brief post and provide a link to your own blog. Any material that is cross posted will be removed.

Copyright
Please remember to use material from copyrighted sources sparingly. If you are unfamiliar with copyright law, Google "fair use" and read one of the many good articles available, such as What Bloggers Should Know About Copyright and Fair Use.

Relevance
NewGathering was begun by a group of diverse individuals who have a common interest in Commonweal, which states as it's mission "to provide a forum for civil, reasoned debate on the interaction of faith with contemporary politics and culture." While NewGathering is an entirely separate and independent venture and has no formal connection with Commonweal, please keep in mind its origins and the interests of its founding members.



20 comments:

  1. One source for post-able photos that I use is Wikipedia - this photo of Eric Clapton, for instance, has info at the page about how it can be used. Most of Wikipedia's photos are of Creative Commons.

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  2. Thanks for this very timely and valuable post.

    I set up two sites on blogger that I might use publicly in the future largely to be able to experiment there with blogger rather than disrupt things more here. So I was wondering what to do about material that I might develop there and then use here. Now I don't have to figure that out.

    All my photographs are mine. I became a photographer and have taken Photoshop courses so that I would never have to use anyone else's visual intellectual property. I plan to allow all my photographs to be used by anyone gratis as long as they acknowledge my ownership and where they got the photo.

    My strategy on commenting on other articles, has been to highlight in a draft version the key areas, and slowly boil them down to a quote or two, while turning the rest of the article into my take on what it all about.

    Do we have any guidelines about music and videos? This is a completely unfamiliar area to me. I have a large music collection so I don't need any online stuff, but it is useful to be able to listen to the same thing, so I am beginning to explore this area.

    I know we as a parish pay royalties for the music we perform in church. I presume that also covers the music we record on CD (maybe that is an extra charge?). One of the reasons I started a series on music and spirituality is that I would like to convince the parish bureaucracy to put our choir's music on our website (maybe that is another royalty fee?)

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  3. I believe it's ok to post any YouTube video (and Vevo, etc.) .... sometimes they are removed from the hosting site for copyright reasons and then they'd no longer show up on the blog, of course.

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  4. I am going to pretty much refrain from inventing guidelines. I spent my entire career from 1972 until my recent retirement in college textbook publishing, and there was no greater nightmare the entire time than the matter of (whether or not and) how to obtain permission to reprint copyrighted material in printed books and eventually in electronic format. We largely followed The Chicago Manual of Style, and to sum up the guidelines in a nutshell, written permission was obtained to reprint anything more than 50 words from an article, 300 words from a book-length work, and even one line from a song or poem. I remember a case in which someone used a full-page picture (for a splashy chapter opener) of a famous athlete without permission, and the company wound up having to pay $100,000 to avoid a lawsuit. Obviously the same rules aren't going to be applied to a blog with limited readership and no intentions of commercial gain such as this one. But even though you can find virtually any poem or lyrics to any song somewhere on the Internet, that doesn't change copyright law.

    I think one of the most important principles to keep in mind is respect for other people's intellectual property. If you quote so much of copyrighted material that readers lose incentive to go to the original, you have in effect appropriated the work as your own. If you are posting material for free from a source that paid for it, then you are in a danger zone. Why should you be able to use for nothing what someone else paid for? (And especially when you can provide a link.)

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    1. So pictures I took myself of my cats and knitting projects would be OK? (hee)

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  5. Dave,
    Thanks again. Yes right now we are a very small community learning how to be contributors as well as commenters. But who knows maybe with Margaret's skills and your help Commonweal might decide we deserve a link under their "communities" page. If we were then to get a wider audience, and new contributors it would be best to have a lot of good practices already in place.

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  6. I cannot find instructions on how to initiate a post in my email. Blogger Help says that there is an option next to the blog name, but I don't see any kind of menu option there.

    Perhaps someone here can guide me on hos to do this? Thanks

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    1. When you are viewing the blog and are logged into the Google account you are using, in the upper right corner of your browser window, you should see your e-mail address, New Post, and Sign Out. Click on New Post to open up the WYSIWYG editor in which posts are created.

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  7. Anne, when you go to the dashboard page, scroll down the list of options on the left hand side of that page until you get to "settings". Click on "settings" and then there will be an "email" option under that.

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  8. Admin - this is what I see when signed in: in the upper right corner is email address, dashboard, sign out. Nothing about New Post.

    Crystal, when I look at settings, I see "blogger" general settings. I am already signed in, and it has my email already, so.....?

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  9. Anne, I haven't ever tried to post something via email before but I'll put up a temporary post here to show you what the page looks like to me. Maybe that will help?

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  10. I'm confused. What is posting via email? I use email to sign in to the site.

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  11. OK, I'm entirely confused now :) What exactly is it that you are trying to do but having trouble with?

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  12. Crystal, I can sign in, and I can comment on the posts others make. But I have not figured out how I can contribute a post even though I am listed as a contributor. The "New Post" option on the upper right task bar of the browser described by Administrator (I assume David N) does not appear even though I am signed in and my email address displays.

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  13. So you can access the dashboard page and see the lists of posts, but the square with "New Post" above the list of posts isn't there?

    This what I see when I go to that page ... link

    All I can think is that David as the administrator might need to re-do adding you in ... maybe that didn't work the first time?

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  14. That was helpful. No, I don't see a list of the posts. The page I see on the dashboard gives me the opportunity to start a new blog. Message below. When I click on "create one to post", it takes me to a page where I could set up my own new blog.

    "You are not an author on any blogs yet, create one now to start posting!

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  15. It sounds then like this is an administration problem because you do have a google account and ID but no access. Do you go to this address? ... https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1315362208709650810#allposts

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  16. You've figured it out, Crystal. This is what I get when I go to the link

    Your current account (name@gmail.com) does not have access to view this page.

    Click here to logout and change accounts.

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  17. I think so. On the account that where I followed the post-commonweal-comments comments and the decision was made to set up this site. I forgot about that. I will send him an email. Thanks, Crystal

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