When is comes to online copyrights, I see a lot of real estate bloggers breaking the law by using copyrighted images and sometimes flat out plagiarizing content. If you intend to become a respect voice in the industry, you need to be aware of what you can use and what you can’t. You also need to keep on top of who is infringing upon your own copyrighted material. So, here is a quick guide to how to keep your real estate blog above board and out of hot water.

Now, just because you see a cool graphic or picture, audio or video on another Realtor’s website or on site like Google images, doesn’t mean you can download it and use it on your blog. Many times images, video and audio are copyrighted and you do not have permission to use them. So, to avoid any future heartache, seek out images that have an open copyright or fair use policy. Some sites offer free images, audio and video while others (typically the higher quality photo sites) will charge you per download of an image which gives you the right to use it.

Where to find multi-media for your blog

The beauty in using podcasts hosted on third party sites is that they and the original user that uploaded the podcast share the copyright liability. The only time you have to worry about copyright infringement is when you actually put the podcast on your own server. Otherwise, the other guy takes all the heat.

Read also: How to record your own podcast

By using a YouTube video, once again, you alleviate your personal liability unless you were the one to upload a copyrighted work you may be using.

Read also: How to create your own viral video

Copyright laws and online rights information

Ever wonder how to find out if someone is infringing on your copyright or what to do if someone does? Here are some resources that will help you to combat copyright infringement on your works. 

A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.

Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we've noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to "chill" legitimate activity.

Copyright Protection Resources

Copyscape is dedicated to defending your rights online, helping you fight against online plagiarism and content theft. Copyscape finds sites that have copied your content without permission, as well as those that have quoted you.

The free Copyscape service makes it easy to find copies of your content on the Web. Simply type in the address of your original web page, and Copyscape does the rest.

Copyright Clearance Center is the world's premier provider of copyright licensing and compliance solutions for the information content industry. They are a trusted intermediary between copyright holders and content users, facilitating the exchange of reuse rights and royalties through a wide range of licensing services.

US Copyright Office

Here you will find all our key publications, including informational circulars; application forms for copyright registration; links to the copyright law and to the homepages of other copyright-related organizations; a link to our online copyright records cataloged since 1978; news of what the Office is doing, including business process reengineering plans, Congressional testimony, and press releases; our latest regulations; and much more.

Can you make money off of online copyright suits?

I have occasionally heard of real estate agents bragging that they made tons of money off of online copyright suits, but I have never seen any proof of this. Unless a big company or brokerage is ripping off your work , which is unlikely, you won’t make a dime off of a copyright suit. 9 times out of 10, the people infringing on your work are poor, so the simple threat of legal action will cause them to back down. Just send them a polite cease and desist letter and you will likely be done with it. Not sure where to send the letter?

Use WhoIs to find the registered owner of a domain.

See a sample Cease and Desist Letter with legal analysis

If the site owner doesn’t respond, likely they are an off shore spammer and your only recourse if to send the letter to the hosting company which you can also find in the WhoIs directory.

RSS feeds and copyright infringement

About twice a day I get a call from a client or another newbie blogger up in arms about another site with their content on it. Usually, it is just an RSS feed excerpt, which is not only a legal use of your content but something you desperately should want. An RSS excerpt of your content will a small piece of one of your articles (usually the first paragraph) with a link back to the original post on your site. That kind of use helps your site to build traffic and search engine traction, so you should be happy when it happens!

Now, some dirty spam sites do pull full RSS feeds, strip out your links and publish them on their sites, that is illegal and you should contact the site owner and request that they desist from further infringement by removing those posts.

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