Week 3’s symposium really got me thinking: How much privacy do we really have on the World Wide Web, as bloggers and as commentators, contributors and viewers of internet content?
The recent legal dispute over Michelle Phan’s use of music on her widely popular blog got me slightly worried. I had heard a bit about it, but it wasn’t until Adrian really drilled us on keeping our blogs alive, that I thought that I should address what we can and can’t do.
Basically, all the info around the legalities of contributing content to the net via blogs and webpages can be found at the following links:
Creative Commons and Licencing Basic Info Video”
Essentially, having a blog is fantastic as you can document just about every moment of your day in just about real time. But, it’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to make sure you’re following the rules. Any images, videos, music clips, and really anything that IS NOT YOURS you shouldn’t upload without giving full credit or asking. For music particularly, it’s a sensitive one. As Michelle Phan has shown us all. Things that are sourced on YouTube tend to be ok for now, as they are already up in the public domain. This DOES NOT MEAN that YouTube owns these media and this content, it just means that we can usually safely REFERENCE IT. For someone like me who is relatively new to blogs, I tend to just steer clear. I have plenty of my own stories to tell.