Quote:
Originally Posted by shibamistress
As a blogger, and a writer, I'd have SERIOUS issues with anyone using my writing in their writing project without first contacting me and asking permission. This is my work, and while I'm happy to have others read it, it is not out there for other people to use in their own work.
Depending on how much you quote, btw, just citing is not enough to get around plagiarism. More to the point, it's just rude not to contact the person and ask for permission to use their material. Fair use allows you to use some quotations for academic purposes, but you still need to be careful how much you quote.
That said, if you contact bloggers who have written about the issues you are writing about, they might be happy to be interviewed about their experiences, which would be a much better way to go.
eta: I would add that sometimes even for small quotes you need to get permission (and possibly pay a fee) first. I had to get permission to use part of a poem for a epigraph in my second (paper) book, and it cost me $50 to do so. Obviously that will be different with blogs, but what I'm saying is that copyright is pretty complex, actually, and you need to do some research and find out more, and make sure you're very careful using other people's work.
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Actually the reason for such permission being needed for the poem is probably due to how much of a poem is quoted vs. how much of a non-fiction book would be. It all comes down to length. I think the rule is up to 10% can be quoted without needing permission. A page or two of a 200 page book being quoted is one thing, but a poem is usually a lot shorter so you don't have as much that you can quote under fair use laws. 10% of a book is very little, but 10% of a poem is quite a lot. I would think with how short blog entries are they would fall under the same rules as for poems. And even if they are just sitting there on the web I would think that blog entries count as being published material as well. I mean if you publish a short story on the web most publishers consider the 1st electronic rights to have been used (or at least that's what I understand) so I can only imagine that blog posts count as being published material as well.