copyright

Minneapolis, MN - Last Friday Demand Progress spoke out against the "10 Strikes" bill (S. 978) championed by Senator Amy Klobuchar. We called on the Senate to decelerate their efforts to pass this unfortunately written anti-piracy legislation. The 10 Strikes bill makes the streaming of unlicensed material a felony with a prison sentence of up to 5 years. In its current form only 10 streams of the content would be necessary to entail the maximum penalty.

Go to our campaign page and send a message to your Congressperson demanding they oppose this problematic bill.

Dear Congressman Hayes,

I have a few questions for you and request your help in answering them.

I'm in a bit of a quandary. You see, a man of high position has allegedly violated my rights. I thought I'd bring the problem to you and ask you what you would do in the same situation.

Here are the details:

On August 4, 2006 I published an article/blog post about Larry Kissell's big promotional gas event that was held in Biscoe, North Carolina. I personally attended and took photographs of the event. I own the copyrights to these photographs. I have never released these photographs into the public domain.

Please follow below the fold...

One of the indispensable tools at bloggers' disposal is fair use of copyrighted material. If we couldn't blockquote, we'd be boned. As we use other people's stuff, we ought to respect the work and creativity that went in to producing it. There's a simple way to do that:

1. Provide a link back to the page where you got the text or image; and
2. say whose work it is.

These are moral guidelines, not legal, that most of us here get right most of the time. I haven't always followed them, but I always should have. Try to keep in mind how you would want others to use your work.