The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • How To Copyright Your Blog

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    Ruth Carter

    DISCLAIMER: Recent conversations with the Copyright Office have led me to change my stance regarding blogs and copyright registration. Please see this post for my updated views.

    I’m working on my first ebook, which is tentative titled The Legal Side of Blogging. During law school, I wrote a substantial research paper on copyright, defamation, and privacy issues related to blogging. I also wrote a blog series called Can My Blog Get Me Sued, Arrested, Fired, or Killed. It made sense to combine the material from these two projects and present them in a way that was useful to the average blogger for my first solo book project.

    Copyright Symbols
    Image by MikeBlogs via Flickr

    Blogs didn’t exist when the Copyright Act was written or last revised. The drafters only considered literary works that are published on paper when they wrote the law. When it comes to copyrighting blogs and websites, the best we can do is to try to find the digital equivalent to the works published on paper and register them accordingly.

    The purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect advancements in the arts and sciences by giving authors and artists protection for the works they create. Copyright protection is afforded to every original expression that is fixed in a tangible medium. The law was written to protect things like books, photographs, music, sculptures, paintings, and audiovisual works. Works that exist only in an electronic form are fixed in a tangible medium, and thus, the law protects them.

    I’ve spent hours considering the copyright implications of blogging and discussed it at length with my cyberspace law professor. We came to the conclusion that bloggers who blog on a set schedule are most like people who write a column in a newspaper or a magazine; and therefore their blogs should be able to be registered as serial works.

    A single work can be registered with the United States Copyright Office for $35. If you publish a blog every week and register it, that will cost $1820 each year. The benefit of having a serial work is that you only have to register it every 3 months for $65, which is only $260 for the year. This saves a lot of time and money.

    This week I was working on my ebook and I needed some clarification on how bloggers should go about registering their works, so I called the Copyright Office. The operator was very helpful in directing me to the circular on serial works, and she thought my ebook idea was interesting.  About five minutes later, I had a follow up question so I called her back. She said she was glad I called back because she needed to tell me that blogs cannot be registered as serial works. The only thing a blogger can do is register each post individually!

    Seriously?!?!?!

    I can see the Copyright Office requiring individual registrations for each post for someone who only writes sporadically; but this rule makes no sense for someone who posts on a weekly basis. They should be given the same protection as any other writer who publishes in a similar fashion in a newsletter, journal, or magazine.  Thankfully, the law protects writers’ and artists’ work the second a work is created, not from the date it is registered. The benefit of copyright registration is that you get to collect attorneys’ fees and statutory damages if someone steals your work and you successfully sue them.

    I used to think that the best thing a blogger can do is register their blog as a serial work and use Google Alerts to monitor the internet for possible infringement. With this latest development, it makes more sense not to register every blog post you write, but only those  that you expect someone will try to pass off as their work. You can still use Google Alerts to police the internet for potential infringers. You just won’t be eligible for attorneys’ fees or statutory damages if your work hasn’t been registered within 3 months of publication if you find that someone is passing off one of your blog posts as their own. However, you can probably still get the post removed from the infringer’s website using a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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  • My Wardrobe Is On Notice – 1 Year Later

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    Ruth Carter

    A year ago, I wrote a blog for Unchaotic about my year-long process to clean out my wardrobe.  I tied a piece of yarn around every hanger in my closet.  When I wore a garment, I took off the yarn.  At the end of the year, the initial plan was to get rid of everything that still had a piece of yarn on it.  This plan was based on the idea that if I had not worn something in a year, I’m never going to wear it, so I might as well get rid of it.

    Initially, I was going to wait until the end of the year before I threw anything out, but as I started putting yarn on my hangers, I saw items that I knew I had not worn in a while and was never going to wear again so by the end of setting up my closet, I had at least 10 items that were already eliminated from my wardrobe.  Some of it went to charity and the rest went in the trash.  I did another similar wardrobe purge in June when I evaluated what I hadn’t worn yet.

    On New Year’s Day, I pulled everything out of my closet that still had a piece of yarn on it. There were about 30 things.  I spent a few hours trying each garment on, remembering why I bought it in the first place, and asking why I hadn’t worn it during the last year.

    There were two items that I did not wear in the last year that are wardrobe staples – my white oxford shirt and my black pullover sweater.  These are the type of thing that everyone should have in their wardrobe, and the fact that I did not wear them does mean that they do not have value in my wardrobe.  They could stay.

    I also realized that owning wrinkle resistant shirts has made me spoiled and so I did not take the time to iron my other shirts, and thus I did not wear my other shirts for a year.  The ones that I thought I would wear if I did my ironing could stay.  I had a few pieces that I didn’t wear because I assumed that they too big after I lost weight.  After trying them on, I saw that they still fit.  They could stay too.

    This project brought a personal issue to the surface that a lot of people have – I sweat regardless of the temperature.  This means I’m more likely to stain my clothes.  (It’s also one of the reasons why I didn’t wear my white oxford during the last year.)  I am one of those people who should never own a silk blouse because I will stain it the first time I wear it.  If I wanted to stop this from happening, I could pay a lot of money to have my armpits botoxed, or I can periodically throw out whatever I stain.  I’ll stick with the latter for now.

    I’m glad I did this project.  I feel like I decluttered my closet and have a clearer idea of my personal style.  The garments that I decided to keep despite not wearing them for a year still have their strings on them as a reminder that I should consider donating them if I continue to not wear them.

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  • SALK Day 3 – The Ruth-Mr. D Story – Part 1

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    Ruth Carter

    When I launched Sponsor A Law Kid, Darvin and Jane DeShazer were among my first sponsors and they asked to sponsor my entire first week.  After my blog about Mr. D the mushroom master, they said I could write about whatever I wanted.  I decided to take the next few days to share part of the Ruth-Mr. D story.  I’m not sure he remembers our first conversation.

    Iguana iguana close up small
    Image via Wikipedia

    Mr. D teaches sophomore biology and AP biology at St. Vincent High School.  One of his rules is you can earn extra credit in his biology class by keeping a plant or animal alive in the classroom.  When I was a freshman, my sister was in his biology class and kept an iguana named Gomer in his classroom.  Gomer needed fresh food and water every day and he came home on the weekends.  It was common for me to take him out of his terrarium and place him on my shoulder.  Sometimes he would jump from my shoulder to Mom’s and scare the bejuzus out of her – kind of like this guy.

    One morning my sister was sick, and she asked me feed Gomer for her.  I had never been in Mr. D’s classroom before.  His room was intimidating to a small freshman like me.  Not only was it at the far end of the senior hallway, it was one of the biggest classrooms in the school with tall heavy lab tables instead of traditional desks.

    I entered Mr. D’s room shyly and saw Gomer in his terrarium.  My fear evaporated as I opened the top to change his food and water.  Mr. D was back in his prep area and didn’t really see me come in.  I called out, “Is it ok if I take him out?”  By the time Mr. D looked up to see (1) who this unfamiliar voice belonged to, and (2) what she was talking about, I had picked Gomer up and placed him on my shoulder.

    Mr. D seemed surprised by my presence in his classroom.  He asked,”Does that belong to you?”  I explained that Gomer was my sister’s and that I was feeding him in her absence.  I was lucky that my sister was one of the smartest kids in his class, so her reputation proceeded me.  I think he thought that was a precocious freshman who didn’t know that he had a rule against taking pets out of their cages at school.

    I think he came to appreciate my bold nature when he had me as a student for the following three years.   He was probably glad when I was a sophomore that Mom decided that it was better for me to have a cactus instead of an animal for extra credit.

    Click here for Part 2 of the Ruth-Mr. D story.

    Sponsor A Law Kid is my endeavor to pay for my last semester of law school. Today’s sponsors are Darvin and Jane DeShazer. For more information about Sponsor A Law Kid or to see what days are still available for sponsorship, visit my Sponsor A Law Kid page.

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