Friday, November 7, 2008

Giveway link, and info on copyrighting

First, the exciting stuff--Lyndsay is giving away some earth-friendly, natural baby wash made by Method. Go here to enter, and be sure to tell her that Beth sent you! If you win, I win too, and my Zoodle's sensitive skin is excited to try this new baby wash. She's choosing the winner today, so enter ASAP!

Second--If you'll scroll down a bit, you'll see that I've copyrighted and registered this blog with MyFreeCopyright.com. This is a nifty service, not only for bloggers, but for anyone who creates something that they'd like to be copyrighted, as long as they can put it into digital form. (If you're a blogger and you have trouble finding your site feed URL, you may find this link helpful.) According to this article, anything you write is automatically copyrighted, but registering it with a service like My Free Copyright gives you evidence that you are the original writer, in case someone tries to plagiarize your work.

So for all of you who were planning on claiming my Chickie poop stories as your own...you are thwarted!

13 comments:

beckiwithani said...

I registered for that giveaway -- thanks! :)

Did you register TOMW too?

Unknown said...

Oh, cool! Thanks so much for the copyright link! :)

Becky said...

Thanks for both links! Good information about copyrighting!

Unknown said...

First, thanks for the MyFreeCopyright info. I signed up!

Second, I really like your new hairstyle.

Dad

C. Beth said...

Becki--Definitely!! I was already planning to but with the recent upsurge in traffic it became really important to me.

Ellebee--No problem! Glad you can use it.

Becky--You're welcome!

Dad--Good; I'm glad you were able to use it too. And thanks! :)

Mike said...

Wow! Thanks a lot for this. I've got to try this with my blogs, especially 365 Sonnets. If I plan to publish them I really don't want any nasty copyright issues come up. I'm always so afraid some random creep's going to steal them and call them his/her own. I saved all the written drafts just in case...the pile's a mile high ! :)

C. Beth said...

Mike--Here's the only thing--Blogger's feed URL only pulls up the 25 most recent posts, so that's all that the copyright site gets a "digital fingerprint" of. Then they'll update every day that you post so all future posts will be protected. You might want to put your sonnets into a Word document or something, and copyright that, in addition to setting up the automatic protection for future posts. Hope that helps.

C. Beth said...

P.S. It may be different if you use Feedburner or something instead of going through Blogger for your feeds. I've never switched mine over.

Mike said...

Yeah, I type up my sonnets up on a gigantic Word file that's backed up on a USB, so when I finish, I'll probably copyright it again! But I may consider Feedburner because I did notice all the sonnets aren't in the copyright! Thanks for the info, C. Beth! :)

Mike said...

Hmmmm...I just started up then deleted a Feedburner feed because it still only does 25 posts. I wish there was some kind of feed that includes every previous post.

C. Beth said...

Mike--BUMMER that Feedburner didn't work. I don't know if there's another way to get copyright documentation for all the old posts or not.

I do know, you can at least back up ALL your previous posts, and do automatic backups for new posts--I do it at BlogBackupOnline.com.

Beth

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing the copyright info, I had thought of doing this before- but, I wonder do you really think it's worth it? I guess it can't hurt...one more thing on my neverending to-do list! HA!

C. Beth said...

Brook--Yeah, I think it's worth it because it's really easy! The chances you'll ever be in court defending a copyright are pretty low. But I think it also helps to prevent plagiarism; I bet some people are less likely to copy if they see the copyright info on your blog. Alternatively you can just write "Copyright" on your blog, since it's already legally YOURS and copyrighted. Registering it just helps, JUST IN CASE you find some trying to steal your stuff.