Have you ever had questions about copyright law?

I found a great chart on this website that shows public domain copyright law. In the U.S., anything published before 1923 is considered public domain. As bloggers, we need to be aware of copyright law and not publish anything that we need permission to publish.

For example, I’ve noticed some bloggers publishing whole poems or devotionals written by other people after 1923. We can’t be doing this — even if we link to it.

We can quote a few lines, if we’re doing it for review purposes, but we can’t just snag someone’s great poem and post it on our site without permission. The author should be compensated (paid) if the work is under copyright — and anything written after 1978 is under copyright automatically.

As writers, this is a risk we take when posting online — anyone can steal your work as well. If you’d like to write a book someday, be careful what you post online. Some publishers don’t want to buy work that’s already been seen online, even if you only have a small blog readership. What if your work has already been cut and pasted on a bunch of other sites? This could lead to legal problems down the road for your publisher — if someone else claims your work as their own.

Book contracts are getting so complicated these days — and many publishers now want to buy electronic rights to your work. Yet how can you offer them electronic rights if your work has already been published online?

I’ve learned a lot of this from more experienced writers in my writing group — and some of them have had to play the meanie when they’ve found other sites cut and pasting their work without permission.

Just be careful. If you’ve got a great story, think about how you’d feel seeing that story show up on another site under someone else’s name. It might be better to save it and send it to a print publication first … where you’ll always have proof that it belongs to you. (For help with writing markets, check out Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers’ Market Guide).

This chart, When U.S. Works Pass Into the Public Domain, was prepared by Lolly Gasaway of the University of North Carolina. If you’re a serious writer, it’s definitely worth your time to educate yourself on copyright law.

If anyone knows a link to a site about Canadian copyright law or other countries, I’d love to learn more about this.