This week, our own Blogcritics mailing list was abuzz with the issue of copyright infringement. Not the kind that only happens when kids use their grandparents’ computers to download the latest Black Eyed Peas tune; but the darker kind, namely: taking the work of an author, say, a talented Blogcritics contributor, and reprinting that work, under your own name, without proper attribution. 

This is a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of journalists, and as a result, one that doesn’t often get very balanced coverage. As writers, we believe that our creative work is sacred, and the United States, and International Law assures us that we retain certain rights in that work, including the rights to copy, alter, and distribute the work. In order to get published though, we often have to give up some of those rights, to let the websites, journals, and publications printing our work do their thing. 

One of the side effects of this process, at least in the blogosphere, is that our creative works are distributed via feeds to loads of other sites and individuals who, in turn, reprint the feeds in their own formats. 

To a certain extent, bloggers acknowledge this when they publish a work on a site with syndicated feeds (a la Blogcritics.org). In fact, part of why we write is to reach the largest possible audience; heavy syndication and high marks on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, and Technorati, are exactly what we want.

However, one of the problems we run into when dealing with this incredibly loose flow of works, is the potential dilution of authorship. In its simplest form, it may be that the author of a work is not immediately apparent; however, most feeds link back to the original source. More troubling however, is the out-and-out lifting of one author’s work and the reprinting under a different name (by troubling, I mean rolled-up newspaper across the nose bad). 

This is of course, a very bad thing, and the toad who steals someone else’s work for their own, should be sent to bed without supper. As an author though, what can you really do about it?

1.  Protect your blog to begin with.

How you go about this depends largely on whether you’re a contributor to a larger site that handles your formatting, or you run your own blog. If you run your blog via Wordpress, your job is easier.