Photo by Horia Varlan
It seems that everything is apparently trying to steal your privacy, your thoughts and even your identity online. Being a bit technologically challenged, I don’t understand the half of it. Still, the ongoing scandals about each new Facebook privacy policy hangs pretty heavy in the air.
What I mean to say is, for people like me who can just about do basic computer things, the exact rights of the blogger/ facebooker are often murky at best. Central to this murkiness is the problem of copyright. Does Facebook truly own stuff you post in a note– what about WordPress?
To be honest, this isn’t such a pressing matter when it comes to day-to-day blogging, but it does cause concern when you consider posting your own work.
Similarly, some poetry magazines aren’t overly keen on you submitting things that are posted online. Some consider this publishing, some don’t. In general, if a poem that has been published on your blog is accepted for magazine publication, the magazine will ask that you take it down (either temporarily or permanently), which I think is fair enough.
The best way to navigate this problem is as Aiko does with her ‘Poetry C.V’– that records her published work and links to any online published poems. The reader gets to see some of her lovely poems, and no-one gets in a strop about rights.
Eventually I’ll probably shamelessly nick this idea, but for now I just wanted to explain why I grumble on about writing, but don’t offer a whole lot of evidence for it!
Filed under: Poetry, Writing Tagged: blogging, copyright, online, poems, poetry, publishing, writing
