You may have discovered that my face is appearing in more of the cover images for my post and in more of the cover images for my videos. There is a reason for that and its not that Ive discovered a new vanity in my mid-40s. The reason is that in my on-going fight against websites that republish my material without permission it is a lot easier for me to show proof of ownership and creativity when my face is in the cover image. If youre interested in the description of that, continue reading..

If Youre in a Similar Situation, resources.
If you have a website or blog that is also frequently scraped, here are some resources that may be useful to you..

I get a bunch of follow-up concerns Whenever I release something about copyright. These are a few of the regularly asked questions..

Can I forward your newsletter to my coworkers?
Yes, naturally. Hit the forward button in your inbox and share it as I wrote it (over-use of hyphens and parentheses is one of the hallmarks of my blog posts so dont be lured to edit those out)..

You may have noticed that my face is appearing in more of the cover images for my blog posts and in more of the cover images for my videos. The factor is that in my on-going fight against sites that republish my material without consent it is much simpler for me to show proof of ownership and originality when my face is in the cover image. Filing DMCA takedown notices is time-consuming and even when filed properly some hosting companies still require even more evidence of initial work and ownership. Being able to say, “hey, thats my image of myself wearing my favorite flannel t-shirt” is a lot easier and faster than writing a description of the originality of my blog post.

Its reasonably easy to write a script that scrapes all of the material from an RSS feed and imports it into a various website. Thats a little harder to stop so my recourse is to file DMCA takedown notifications with Google to get them to remove the upseting content from their results pages.
Filing DMCA takedown notices is lengthy and even when filed effectively some hosting companies still need even more evidence of initial work and ownership. Being able to state, “hey, thats my image of myself wearing my favorite flannel t-shirt” is a lot easier and faster than writing a description of the creativity of my blog site post.

Help Understanding Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use.

I like to share the title or a little summary of your post with my staff, is that fine?
Yes, as long as youre not republishing the entire thing and or passing it off as your own. If you want someone to read the entire blog post, provide the link to it..

I embedded your YouTube video into my class/ school website, is that okay?.
Yes, thats completely great as long as youre using the embed or link supplied by YouTube and not downloading the video then republishing it (read YouTubes TOS for more information)..