New Feature Suggestion: A Module to Include your Copyright/Other

1. 66

   Making-Jewelleryposted 11 years ago

   I often intend to put a module either within my hub, or at the end, that might include some standard text/a link, e.g. that says "Copyright Me (Year) - Please do not copy and paste this article, but feel free to post a link using this url ....."  or "Join Hubpages by clicking ....."
   
   It'd be handy if we could build 1-3 max of these Personal Template modules to easily include within our hubs so I could just pick one, rather than having to find one of my hubs where I had used this type of text, then open it, copy/paste, go back to the one I am currently writing and re-use whatever wording I used.
   
   I understand that monitoring these could prove problematical with regard to what people put in them, so maybe they could appear/disappear based on an algorithm such as "Once you've been registered for X months, have more than X hubs and an Author Score greater than X".

   replyreport
   1. 83

      Simone Smithposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I appreciate the recommendation, Making-Jewellery!
      
      I have made a note of it and shall bring it up in our next community meeting. It is somewhat related to another feature we are considering that acts as a template presenting credentials/biographic information; perhaps the name of a non-copyright license, should one choose to apply one to his or her work, may be added to it!

      replyreport
   2. 83

      Simone Smithposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Making-Jewellery!
      
      I want to thank you again for your suggestion. It looks like it might lead to more problems than solutions and not be as helpful as one might imagine, unfortunately.
      
      We discussed this in our community yesterday and came to two conclusions:
      1. We generally try to dissuade people from publishing the same content over and over across Hubs
      2. A template capsule like this would open up more opportunities for abuse than benefit- both for HubPages and moderators
      3. We have not found that putting copyright notices on content makes much of a difference when so much content is stolen by scrapers who don't care what you've written
      
      For this reason, we are unlikely to implement a template capsule feature, but we are still thinking through the ability to share more topic-specific credentials!

      replyreport
2. 38

   Ceres Schwarzposted 11 years ago

   This seems like an interesting suggestion. Sometimes, I do come across hubs with the copyright symbol and the author's name and some even have this image that says something like "protected by copyscape, do not copy". I don't have any such thing in my hubs though. And I've seen many other hubs that don't have this as well.
   
   So I wonder if this is really necessary? Because we are listed as the author of the hub, right? Do you recommend actually putting the copyright symbol in hubs? I wonder if I should start doing that? Also, does doing something like that really prevent other people from plagiarizing your hubs?

   replyreport
   1. 66

      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      1) No
      2) Yes
      3) As the author, you have copyrights whether any statements are made, or not
      4) see above three replies
      5) No, not at all.

      replyreport
      1. 38

         Ceres Schwarzposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Okay thanks for the reply. I guess I won't start putting that copyright symbol on all my hubs if it doesn't really make a difference and it's already established that we have copyright as the author of the hub.

         replyreport
3. 86

   Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years ago

   I really like this idea.  Even though we automatically have the copyright on anything we write, it would make it easier to search for our copied articles using our name or user name.
   
   Of course, we would have to keep it short to avoid duplicating our own hubs.

   replyreport
   1. 38

      Ceres Schwarzposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I might be missing something here but, isn't it that all the hubs that we write have our HubPages username at the top right, in the same line as the title of our hub? Does this not count when searching for copied hubs?

      replyreport
4. 66

   Making-Jewelleryposted 11 years ago

   I think people are focussing more on the copyright side of things in the responses, whereas that wasn't my main focus of attention.
   
   I believe it'd be an easy way to use a referral tracker, or to include some oft-repeated "signature", which some authors are comfortable with as other sites have a Resources box for them to use.
   
   Yes, there is a link at the top to an author's profile, but [a] that's all the way up there at the top [b][ it's tiny, even I hardly ever use/spot it.  And, this module would perform a more "instant gratuity" function for the reader, especially when it comes to referrals.

   replyreport
5. 87

   WryLiltposted 11 years ago

   I personally prefer to place a warning in the middle of my hubs that are often copied. That way there is no way they can miss it, plus scrapers will copy it, making stolen content sites look more illegitimate.
   
   But yes, everything on the internet is copyright unless otherwise stated.

   replyreport
6. 90

   Judi Beeposted 11 years ago

   Coincidentally, I've just run into a problem arising from my previous use of a copyright statement in my hubs.  I used to put something like "All my content is copyright of Judi Bee etc".  Sometime ago a photographer complained about this - he felt that I was trying to claim copyright of his photo, which I used on my hub, despite my having given him credit and a backlink to his Flickr page (it was a CC non commercial licence - I thought that was fine when I'd just started here - I wouldn't use it now).  I apologised at the time, explained my intention was to protect my content - ie my writing,  and removed the copyright notice (I had discovered already that it was useless - content is copied regardless).  It was all amicable and I kept the photo up.
   
   So, this afternoon a friend contacted me to say that she had found my name on a Flickr discussion forum - the photographer had posted about the issue at the time and I was the subject of a discussion which wasn't horrible, but wasn't entirely complimentary either.  I Googled it and found it too - nice that Google associates my name with such an issue!
   
   My experience then - a copyright notice does no good in stopping theft and, in this case at least, can do more harm than good.

   replyreport