Why is appropriation such an important part of the blogosphere? James Gibson, director of the Intellectual Property Institute, has two reasons.
Gibson discusses how ruining a Web site's reputation can often do more damage than taking the offending blogger to court.
Disciplining naughty children and being nice to coworkers is often on par with blogsosphere behavoir. Gibson explains.
When it comes to blogs, what's fair use and what's just unfair? Copyright lawyer Joy R. Butler breaks it down.
Bloggers have protection. But Butler says it'll cost 'em if foes are outside the U.S.

Amy Sherman has been blogging about cooking for almost three years. She's gotten used to other blogs linking to and even quoting her posts about culinary charms from chocolate to chutney. That's simply the referential nature of the blogosphere, she's told herself.

But Sherman and dozens of other bloggers opining on such female-friendly topics as dating, fitness and beauty weren't prepared to have their entire blog entries reposted without permission by All Women's Talk, a new online portal peppered with ads that seemingly presents no original content of its own.

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NAMELESS CRIME

Sherman doesn't sell ads on her blog. And she didn't want a stranger making money off her content. It's the offline equivalent of sheering the glossy substance from Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Ladies Home Journal, then pasting it into a new magazine and making it available on the newsstand.

In this case, the newsstand is the World Wide Web, and the fall gals are blogs such as Cooking with Amy, Charming But Single, Beauty Addict and I Am Therefore I Date.

He's no lady, but George Clooney felt a similar sting last week when politico socialite Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post created a remix of Clooney sound bites from previous interviews then posted it on her blog as if the leading man had written it himself. Clooney cried foul. Huffington removed the post.

Women!! Celebrities!!! Is no one safe from, um, what do you call this new form of alleged digital thievery? It's not quite spam blogging, the act hoisting quickie phony blogs on Google to drive traffic to a commission-paying site. Is it misappropriation? Copyright infringement? Plagiarism? Maybe it's time for a new word. Plagiarblogging, perhaps?

James Gibson, director of the Intellectual Property Institute at the University of Richmond School of Law, says these cut-and-blog jobs could be classified as all of those thanks to the ever-changing nature of the Web. They could also be subject to legal action.

But Gibson contends what's more threatening than a court case is the damage that could be done to a Web site's reputation because of a cyberspace catfight.

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WAR OF WORDS

So that's what the ladies who felt exploited by All Women's Talk did, battling online instead of in a court room. Their campaign? Formulated through a mass e-mail chain. Their tactics? Filling the All Women's Talk comments section with protests. Their ammunition? Caustic e-mails to both Google, whose AdSense service provided the site with revenue, and "Olga," the alleged All Women's Talk webmaster.

Although "Olga" -- the domain name allwomenstalk.com is actually registered to someone in the Ukraine named Vyacheslav Kaushan -- originally responded to an interview request, she didn't give asap a phone number where she could be reached or answer questions sent by e-mail questioning the site's posting policies.

But she has responded to the aforementioned bloggers' concerns online. In various posts on All Women's Talk, she's said: a.) The site is a work in a progress. Mistakes are bound to happen; b.) The site is protected under the Creative Commons License; and c.) The site and the practice of reposting blogs is good because it will garner more readers for both parties.

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FAIR USE

In the Wild West that is the blogosphere, what's a blogger to do?

Joy R. Butler, Washington copyright lawyer and author of the upcoming book "The Permission Seekers Guide Through the Legal Jungle," says that the same copyright laws that make it illegal to copy books, music and movies also protect blogs.

According to Butler, none of the excuses from "Olga" would stand up in court because: a.) Once something is published to the Web, it's subject to copyright infringement laws; b.) That Creative Commons License, which loosens copyright infringement, only affects All Woman's Talk's original content -- not the content of the bloggers; and c.) The get-hits-or-die nature of the blogosphere don't mean a thing if the parties involved don't grant permission.

Butler notes that because All Women's Talk is based outside of the U.S., legal action would be very expensive and probably not worth a blogger's time.

Besides, in this instance, the offended bloggers may have won their online war against All Women's Talk. Recently, "Olga" quit posting entries in their entirety, opting for the first few paragraphs instead. The comments section is now moderated. And Google has removed the ads, leaving All Women's Talk without a visible source of revenue.

But that isn't satisfying Sherman's appetite.

"There's something very invasive about having people just take something from you and repurpose it for their own reasons," she says days after the debacle.

Her content is still being served without her permission despite several unanswered e-mails to "Olga" insisting that Sherman's reposted blog entries be removed from All Women's Talk. After all of this, as surreal as it may seem, Sherman says she now can sympathize with Clooney.

Only in the blogosphere.

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Derrik J. Lang is an asap reporter.

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