Protect yourself from copyright breaches
Jinfo Blog

By Norma Beavers

Abstract

The article "Linking to copyright content" is a must-read for information specialists who undoubtedly use links as shortcuts to point to specific material online. Norma Beavers highlights some of copyright expert Clare Painter's top nuggets of advice.

Item

These days everyone uses online links and forwards them on to others - take for example your emails, social media or website content. They are almost bound to include links. In fact, I don't know anyone who doesn't send a link at some point.

But wait a minute, is the content of that link subject to copyright laws and are you infringing those laws? Copyright law used to be a big issue in publishing. The thing is, despite social media, it still is. Some people genuinely don't know that. Others do know but ignore it.

Clare Painter's recent article "Linking to copyright content" (Subscriber content) covers all the bases and is a must-read for information specialists and just about everybody else who uses links.

Tricky issues

There are some tricky issues to navigate and copyright and licensing expert Clare covers some key points in her article. In my opinion, humble though it may be, this is an article that could go viral.

What does it say? Her advice includes: check your sources! Are you passing on a link that is legitimate? How can you tell? Should you seek permission before passing on a link? Who should you approach for permission? Will you have to pay to pass on a link or feature it? Should you ever just pretend you're oblivious to copyright and pass on a link anyway?

Clare's article is full of more sound advice about copyright content and it's worth taking it on board. Well-intentioned people post unauthorised or pirated content online frequently these days. The trick is to avoid becoming one of them and this article will leave you in no doubt about what you need to do to steer clear of trouble.

According to Clare, "Linking can add breadth and depth to your publications. But it's important to make sure you're not leaving your organisation open to problems by failing to check the basics."

Find out more

Read Clare's article "Linking to copyright content" to be absolutely sure you are taking the right steps to protect your organisation - and incidentally yourself.

« Blog