And a new trend that has come up recently. This one is a product of a new generation raised online. Allow your content to be distributed (WITH CREDIT AND LINK TO THE ORIGINAL OR YOUR WEBSITE) This drives me a little batty because I start to diverge into this battle in my head about copyrights royalties, etc.

But I must say I can see why this trend is becoming the thing to do.

If the content is mine to give away and I have not been hired and paid by someone else then I can allow readers who appreciate the content to share it, to repost it on other sites. The only thing I would ask is proper citation. Link back to where you got the content from. Don’t change the content or take it out of context.

Then what you can say that I have gained is free advertising and the ability to have a wider audience read my writing. So something I write or a photo I take or a video clip I upload my become viral (please), that should be OK with any person interested in promoting what is on their website.

So what does this mean for the copyright laws?

I would think that under this more relaxed policy that there still exists the citation rule. Also you cannot claim that the content was originally yours or that it was written specifically to be posted on your site.

If it was paid content then there should be a separate disclaimer on the site about clipping. But if there are available and preprogrammed options for clipping then the new rules for content sharing apply. Cite, link, credit.

So what tools are available for clipping?

Zemanta

Google Notebook

Clipmarks

Evernote

Notefish

Tumblr

There are several options for clipping for server administrators who also develop websites, contact me for more information.

Not all of the tools for clipping are for sharing. Zemanta is expressly designed for this and if you mouse over parts of my blog posts that I have enables it in then you will see how you can clip.

Image via CrunchBase