Posts from my blog tend to appear on other sites

Actually, I am fine with that. I have copyrighted all the posts on my blog, but I have also licensed all of them with a Creative Commons license (unless you see a specific notice stating otherwise). In other words, if you are one of those who is aggregating my posts and reproducing them on your site, that is okay with me, as long as you do the following things.

1. You retain my name and copyright notice on all posts, and you include a link to my main blog site on your site or in the post itself, preferably both.

2. You do not make any money from my work without talking directly to me and getting my permission (and preferably offering some sort of royalties).

3. You do not change my words or modify my information without saying you have done so and releasing your derivative work under the same license.

I know a lot of people who have been complaining about this sort of thing, and I understand their frustration. Instead of fighting this, I am choosing to embrace it. To help those who wish to use my content to comply with my wishes, I am now including an automatic copyright notice and link at the bottom of each of my rss feed entries. If you are using WordPress, you can do the same thing with the Simple Feed Copyright plugin.

11 comments April 20th, 2008