Confused About Copyright: A Forum

This morning, just before I pushed the ?submit? button for my posting on ?Why Teach Evolution,? I hit the mental ?pause? button. Part of my posting was a reblogging of yet another wonderful column by Olivia Judson, my favorite science writer on evolutionary biology. Her piece was originally a New York Times-on line guest column.

Why pause? Because, technically, her essay is copyrighted by the New York Times. However, when I read it on line, one of my options is to ?share? this essay in any number of ways. I can post it to my del.icio.us account (and I almost always do). I can post it to Facebook (check). I can Digg it, Mixx it, Yahoo! Buzz it, and Permalink it (almost never do that?one has to be a little selective in one?s tools, no?) I can even email it to a gazillion friends. Those are one-click options that the New York Times offers me every time I read on line.

But am I allowed to reblog to the HASTAC site? I always give proper attribution and credit, of course. I have kept track of the reader numbers for my columns where I reblog from elsewhere and where I just write my own thoughts and the numbers do not indicate that a great mass of humanity is rushing to the HASTAC site to just to read the sporadic Times reblogs. No difference at all, that I can measure. So I?m not taking business away from the Times.

Sometimes I think about just giving the link, but I subscribe to the New York Times on line and providing a link may giving access to the Times to non-subscribers ; that might even be worse than "sharing," as the Times says. 

So the confusing big question:  What does it mean to reblog copyrighted material that comes with many options for public dissemination of that material? What is copyright online in August 2008? What does it mean? What are its limits and responsibilities and "intentions" (can a copyright law have an intention?).

I read a lot on intellectual property and it is clear we are in a mid-course moment where no one fully understands the meaning or implications of anything having to do with the distribution and remixing of information.

So let?s talk about it. I?d love fellow bloggers or blog-readers to offer their ideas about copyrights and copywrongs in the comment section below.

And perhaps a future forum for our new HASTAC Scholars might be copyright on line. I?d love to hear what you think, what you do, what practices you follow, what community standards you think work best, what you teach your students, what you learn from your teachers about IP . . . all that . . .