Thanks from me as well. It seems to be a pretty unclear subject. I think what I’ll do from now on is “collect” any newspaper articles I come across, posting a link and a few paragraphs at first, but going back and posting the whole thing later if it disappears. In any case, after hearing your stories about Murdoch et al, I’ll be asking each paper on an individual basis.

As a rule, I don’t repost someone else’s original content here. I know a few bloggers who, as a rule, DO post other’s original content, usually with attribution. The only reason I did it this time was because it was a) posted on a non-pay site, b) was directly associated with Bull Run and c) might be gone from that URL tomorrow, rendering a simple link useless. If any one of these was not the case, I would not have copied the whole thing. But I think I should have asked for permission, and will do so in the future.

And here’s the conclusion of a column published along the same lines Friday in the Cincinnati Enquirer: “… We’re no longer willing to idly watch our good efforts stolen. In an attempt to track down such content parasites, The Enquirer and Cincinnati.Com now employ technology that scours the media landscape for illegal use of our content. In recent weeks, we have sent warnings to several blogs, Web sites and radio stations. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” It’s not clear from the editorial whether, or how much, it would help if the Enquirer gets clear attribution. (Full article: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100305/COL26/3070301/)

I’m not endorsing either of those sentiments. In fact, our owners, GateHouse Media, use the Creative Commons approach, which — as I understand it — generally allows free non-commercial use of our material (though, obviously, we appreciate attribution). Everybody does it different. But I am saying there are media outlets that are pretty restrictive, and some of them are nasty about it. You probably want to look into an outlet’s philosophy before republishing entire articles.