Copyright widgets- are they worth a damn?
I've been bloging for about 4 months now, and it's finally beginning to take off. Now I'm beginning to be worried about someone ripping it off, because I'm just as narcissistic as any other blogger thinking the world wants to steal my ideas.
I have seen many people here use those "do not copy" widgets on their blogs- can someone explain how those things actually work- legally or technically, and recommend a good one I can use for my own blog.
Thanks in advance, please reply.
I am not sure how effective those copyright widgets are against content theft. But sites like myFreeCopyright they may act as as evidence in proving the ownership of the content if it is copied by someone else.
There exists nothing like copyright-ing your works which few think is true ( Not sure what the verb form of copyright is :-? ) Every article that you write is your own and no one is entitled to copy them unless you explicitly give them the permission to do so.
Sites like myFreeCopyright.com (mfc) help you in proving that you own some article which has been copied by someone else. Whenever you publish an article, you need to go to the site and enter the URL of your blog post. A copy of that page will be stored on their server. Later, if someone claims an article written by you as their own (after publishing the same on their blog ), you can use the page stored at mfc as an evidence.
But I am not sure if this really works. Consider the situation where A posts an original article on his blog. B copied A's article and registers the URL at mfc. Now, is B entitled to claim that his article had been copied by A because he had registered the URL at mfc?
Generally when claims are filed to google, they decide which article is the original one by looking at the credibility of the sites. ( This is what I think is true ) For example, if a person A copied an article from The Hindu website and files a DMCA case, it is highly improbable that 'The Hindu' would be penalised for it. ( even if he shows an evidence from mfc )
But still, if you find that someone has copied your article, you are always encouraged to file a complaint.
As TS mentioned, the widgets at times may also encourage someone to copy your article! Moreover, those widgets consume some space on your blog which could have been used in a better way. On the other hand, some people put up some banners saying that their articles are under 'Creative Common License' or something similar. These kind of banners are required because it is not assumed that content is not allowed to be copied unless explicitly told.
Disabling right click is not a very good option. Those who want to copy your content will anyway copy it by disabling JavaScript. Moreover, it can be problematic if someone wants to copy a word or a phrase from your blog for some other purpose. For example, if someone mentions about X which has aroused my interest in it, I simply select the text > Right Click > and select 'Search Google'. Some people disable selection and right click and it really annoys me. ( I feel a bit lazy to manually type that in Google :( )
And now for all those who are reading this article, I wish to say something. Many bloggers post images on their blogs without mentioning the source or stating it to be 'Google Images' ( which is actually not the source ) Just as we do not want our articles to be copied, those who own their images may also frown at copying their images. So, it is always recommended to state the source of the image with a link to that page. This will also probably help in conveying to Google Image Search that the original owner of the image is that other site and not yours.
it is always recommended to state the source of the image with a link to that page.
Even after that, it may amount to plagiarism. Ideally one should use original image or look for copyright free image from the web. The least one should do is to look for terms for usage before publishing an image taken from some other website.
Yes, that is true. I have thought of mentioning that point but hadn't.
Normally, I feel that it is considered acceptable ( ? ) to use someone else's image after linking back to the source. One of the reasons ( among many others ) why people do not like others copying their content is that it may lead to duplication of the content across many sites and all of them may be flagged by search engines . Providing the link ( clickable, and preferrably do follow) may help in conveying to the Google bot the original source so that someone searching Google Images would see the picture from the original site rather than from the site which has used it.
But still the fact remains that it is a form of plagarism.
Unfortunately, even I have a couple of images on my blog which I have copied from other sites. 
I feel that it is considered acceptable ( ? ) to use someone else's image after linking back to the source.
Not always, you can be sued for that. Fortunately (?), Indian copyright laws are not strong and there is no international agreement around plagiarism, we go away with this kind of plagiarism. But, the day governemnts start looking at plagiarism seriously, image stealing will also lead to troubles.
Hope that someone does not come to me with an arrest warrant! 
( Just joking! 
)
I have used images that way in very few posts and of course, for the picture in my sidebar. I don't feel like removing them now. 
And, I also used a song ( the same song ) as the background for the videos that I made for some of the contests at IB; mentioning the music source at the end of the video...
Nobody uses more images in their blogs than me. I rip most of them off Google and know its not right, thats why I'm slowly moving to stock photos that have the watermark on them. Even for the other Googled images, I check for 'more sizes'. If there are tons of the exact images, what's wrong with using 1?
Its not really a problem as long as you're linking it to the source. If you don't, that's when its looked down upon.
Here is a tongue twister ( a very long one ), related to copyright.
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