Bloggers are free to express their thoughts, ideas and share their opinions. However, bloggers must adhere to generally applicable rules and legal requirements (copyright, trademark protection, etc.). Failure to do that may lead to unpleasant legal consequences (e.g. libel action, lawsuits, etc.). For bloggers, knowledge of legal issues is just as necessary as the ability to write texts.

By reading this article, you will learn about important legal issues for bloggers:

1. Copyright
2. Plagiarism
3. Opinion vs libel, defamation and slander
4. Trademarks, designs, company names, people’s names and images
5. Unique local legal requirements
6. Bloggers’ liability

Copyright

Copyright or author’s right is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators (writers, photographers, painters, web designers, etc.) have over their literary and artistic works. Copyright work includes books, music, paintings, sculpture, films, computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings. 

There are two types of rights under copyright:

• Economic rights, which allow the rights owner to derive financial reward from the use of his works by others; and

• Moral rights, which protect the non-economic interests of the author.

Copyright is crucial for bloggers. Knowing copyright, you will avoid troubles and protect your intellectual property:

#1. You cannot steal photographs, pictures, articles, icons, etc., from other websites

All materials published on other websites are protected by copyright. These materials are the property of a website’s owner. On most websites, you definitely saw the following sentence: 

As a rule, such a sentence is placed at the bottom of a website. (c) stands for ‘copyright’ and is used to mark the content of a website as protected by copyright. However, note that this sentence and (c) is placed for informational purposes only. Website photographs, design elements, etc., are protected by law in any case. 

Any part of the work is also protected by law. So you can’t cut out a picture or copy 20% of an article and use it.

If you want to copy something from another website and place it on yours, you have to:

• Check the terms of use of the website (they may also be named as ‘Terms and Conditions’, ‘T&C’, ‘Website Rules’, etc.), which are available at the bottom of a webpage:

• Sometimes website owners explicitly inform users of the right to use the website’s content under some conditions, e.g. requiring to add an active link to the website from which the content was copied/downloaded/etc.

• Usually, on websites offering to download photographs, icons, etc., terms of use are placed near icons, pictures, etc., that can be downloaded. Read them.

• If the terms of use do not allow you to use the content under any conditions, there is only one way to use the content. You must contact the site administrator or owner and ask for permission.

If you violate someone’s author rights to his or her content, you will face negative consequences (read below). Until your website is new and doesn’t attract many visitors, the unauthorized usage of content can be unnoticed for a long time. However, your misconduct will likely be spotted as your website grows and attracts more visitors.

#2. Limitations and exceptions to copyright 

Sometimes, it may be possible to use photographs, articles and other works without the owner’s permission. That can be done if such uses are covered by limitations and exceptions in the national legislation. Examples of limitations and exceptions to copyright include:

• The quotation of works. For example:

” One day Laura’s boyfriend was offered a great job opportunity in Lithuania, a Northern European country. So, they decided to leave Mexico for Lithuania. For Laura, it meant a great opportunity to live in Europe and travel cheaply and easily as much as she could. “

“Laura Bronner, Full of Positive Vibe Digital Nomad, Who Lives in Utena” published on nomadized.work.

• the use of news of the day.
• using the work would be a “fair using” for the purpose of criticism and review, parody and satire, or reporting news, and there is sufficient acknowledgement. For example:

Note that copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime and at least 50 years after the author’s death, regardless of the date the work was lawfully made available to the public. After the aforementioned period, works are no longer protected by copyright and can be used without permission. 

However, it is important to stress that the author’s permission to use his or her materials, or the expiry of copyright, does not confer an unrestricted right to use the works. The law prohibits impersonation of the author of a book, article, etc., unless the rights holder has given permission. A ghostwriting agreement is used for this purpose. Under such an agreement, the author allows another person to claim authorship of a book, picture, etc. 

For example, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne is no longer protected by copyright. You can publish this book, copy its parts but you must refer to Jules Verne as the book’s author.

#3. Other people cannot steal your photographs, pictures, articles, icons, etc. from your website

Copyright is not just the bad news for you. The good news is that your content is also protected by copyright. Other bloggers cannot use your precious articles, pictures and other materials without your permission. 

To protect your intellectual property (articles, images, etc.):

• Create terms and conditions for a website (you may use this free website T&Cs template available to download on my blog). Include the following sentence to the terms: “You may not use or reproduce or allow anyone to use or reproduce any materials available at the website for any reason without written permission from the owner of the website.”

• From time to time, browse the Internet by yourself:
  – to google the keywords and headlines that you use on your website. Use Google Alerts. Google Images (use Google Images Search). Do that at least once per month. These measures are time-consuming but necessary to protect your intellectual property.
  – to check copyright on blogger, use the following websites: SiteLiner (good for finding duplicate content, broken links, and more); CopyScape (good for searching for copies of your page on the web).
  – If you want to save time, use web scraping services. 
• Web scraping. Web scraping (also called internet scraping, website scraping, or web data extraction) is an automated process of gathering publicly available web data from targeted websites. Instead of collecting data manually, web scraping tools acquire vast information in seconds. Such services are provided, for example, by Oxylabs.

If you found an article, photograph, etc., used without your permission:

• send a notice to the owner of the website. If there is no information on how to contact the owner/administrator on the website, use Hunter.io. Hunter lets you find professional email addresses in seconds.
• if no reaction to your email follows, the next best step is to hire a law firm. However, if the website, infringing your intellectual property rights, is owned by persons who live outside your home country, lawyers’ services will cost tons of money. In that case, do the following:
  – If stolen materials are stored on social networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc.), inform companies administrating those networks. Ask them to block the site.
  – Leave negative comments about the website infringing your rights on Google reviews and similar sites. Let others know that this website should not be trusted.

#4. Creative Commons licenses (CC licenses)

To get more traffic from Google, you need backlinks. By granting permission for everyone to use your content (e.g. images) or part of it for an active link to your website, you can get many backlinks. So, if you choose this backlink-building strategy, it is very useful to do that under Creative Commons licenses. 

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”.

CC-licensing your work is simple. All you have to do is choose the CC license that suits your needs and then communicate this choice in a way that will be clear to people who come across your work. As part of this communication, you should include a link to the license you’ve chosen.

This can be as simple as a bit of text stating and linking to the license in a copyright notice, like this: 

© 2021. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. 

Plagiarism

According to the University of Oxford, plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition.

Copying a part of someone’s article and presenting it as your product is plagiarism. If you re-write someone’s text, it’s also plagiarism. For example, if Dian Brien from Backlinko published an article on SEO, you took it, changed some sentences and re-draw Dian’s charts, it will be plagiarism. 

It is not plagiarism to write about topics that have already been covered on other websites. For example, many sites are writing about SEO. If you visit 10 or more of them, you soon notice that they write about the same things. However, the writing style, angle of presentation of information, advice, etc. are not identical. There are some differences. The line between an original work and a poster might be very thin on the Internet which is full of gazillions of information.  

Opinion vs libel, defamation and slander

On your blog, you can freely express your opinion. An opinion is an understanding of facts, an evaluation, a view of facts and values, comments, and observations. An opinion is subjective and is not subject to the criterion of truth, but it must be based on facts and must not deliberately misrepresent the facts. There are various ways of conveying information: oral, written, through the press and other mass media. 

But be careful not to break the law. Unsubstantiated opinions can be qualified as libel, slander or defamation.

Defamation is an area of law that provides a civil remedy when someone’s words end up causing harm to your reputation or your livelihood. Libel is a written or published defamatory statement, while slander is defamation that is spoken by the defendant.¹

You are entitled to express your opinion; however, it must be based on true facts or interpretation of true facts. The dissemination of an opinion based on knowingly false facts may lead to criminal investigation and prosecution.

Trademarks, designs, company names, people’s names and images

In your blog, you can mention company names, trademarks or present design samples but only to inform your readers about certain facts or situations associated with particular trademarks, etc. You cannot use other persons’ trademarks, company names, etc. to promote your blog or associate yourself with them unless you received prior permission.

A similar situation is with other persons’ names and images. For example, if you write a blog post about Boris Johnson, you can use his name and images made by you or lawfully downloaded from other websites. But, you cannot create a banner with Boris’s image promoting your blog unless you received his permission.

Bloggers’ liability

Individuals own most blogs. Their liability is unlimited. Any break of law or infringement of the intellectual property rights of other persons in trademarks, works, etc. can have negative consequences for bloggers. For example, the company whose trademark rights were infringed may claim damages from the blogger.

Bloggers who write blogs for a living should take certain precautions to limit their liability. You can find more on this topic in my post about freelancers’ unlimited liability and effective methods to eliminate it.

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^{Images from Pixabay.}