1. I added an RSS feed showing comments as they come up. Pretty much all of the comments are really helpful, so I thought I'd try as hard as I could to make them accessible.
2. Sara had a question about copyright and using other people's information. I'm no lawyer, but here is a summary of what I know:
- Hyperlinking -- linking to other content is pretty much legal, unless you are pointing to illegal content for the explicit purposes of disseminating the information. Don't point to illegal content and you are safe. Here's a good resource for this.
- Fair Use -- you can use portions of other people's content so long as it is to make a separate point, such as in a review or a parody of a work. The key points here are a) don't copy all of the work b) have a point other than the one illustrated in the work -- you have to be adding to the conversation. Here's a great comic on the subject of copyright and fair use.
- Common Knowledge -- you cannot claim a copyright on factual information. Things like gas prices, weather facts and the like are not copyrightable. Recently, a court case declared that information like batting averages, and hockey point totals are also not copyrightable.
- Licensing -- many blogs, wikis, and photo groups offer Creative Commons licensing on their writing, art and/or photos. This means you can copy without asking so long as you follow certain conditions depending on the license. Flickr, for instance, has a collection that points to photos that have applied a creative commons license to their works. An artist can choose to add any or all of the following four restrictions to their license:
- Attribution -- you must give the originator credit for the work.
- No derivs -- you cannot change/re-purpose the work.
- Non-commercial -- you cannot use the work to make money.
- Sharealike -- you have to include a similar creative commons license on your work.
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