Hi

I am just wondering where I stand on taking news articles from other sites to add to my own website. I would be re-wording the articles and not just cut and paste. If I am able to do this would I need to attribute or even link to the source!

Also I have seen on a number of sites that publish news along with images relating to the article, a disclaimer something like this

Should you find anything on here that you own the copyright to and wish it to be removed please notify us for immediate removal.

Is that acceptable or could someone still undertake a lawsuit if they wanted to.

Thanks

It's really rather a grey area. If you're only changing one or two words, it's still plagiarism and you could get into trouble as the article is subject to copyright laws.

Passing someone else's work off as your own - which is pretty much what you'd be doing - is wrong. Using it as a reference, or even quoting chunks of the text is acceptable as long as you identify (and preferably link to) the source.

The disclaimer on the site you've mentioned really doesn't count for anything. It's a bit like youtube - they have disclaimers like that, but still get sued to hell!

It's really rather a grey area. If you're only changing one or two words, it's still plagiarism and you could get into trouble as the article is subject to copyright laws.

Passing someone else's work off as your own - which is pretty much what you'd be doing - is wrong. Using it as a reference, or even quoting chunks of the text is acceptable as long as you identify (and preferably link to) the source.

The disclaimer on the site you've mentioned really doesn't count for anything. It's a bit like youtube - they have disclaimers like that, but still get sued to hell!

Nice one ta! There is so much more to this than I thought. Oh well. It's a fun(ish).

Nice one ta! There is so much more to this than I thought. Oh well. It's a fun(ish).

Heh, try having it as a career! I suggest a trip to the library to read up on anything and everything you think you might need to know...

Most of my job is time spent reading, although I do manage to squeeze some design work in there too!

It's a bit like anything else really, they gotta find out first, and then secondly it's a cease and decist notice.

Copying and republishing will almost certainly be breaking that site's copyright.

A lot of the big site will buy their stories from agencies/agregators so you may see same story in a few places. It doesn't mean they have copied each other.

Quote small chunks where relavent to your site, but always provide a link to full article on the owning site. It's only polite!

Had you written an article you were proud of, wouldn't you be annoyed to find something remarkably similar elsewhere passed of as their work?

The site(s) your thinking on 'copying' from will have a "source" link (Unless its their news) simply take it from the original source, and quote their link as where you got the news from and all should be fine, thats how I do it and how 90% of sites I use do it.