Armchair BEA Day 4: Ethics in Blogging

Day 4: Ethics in Blogging

"Disclosure.  Copyright and credit.  Plagiarism.  Succeeding without selling out.  What guidelines must we follow as bloggers--attribution, disclosure, honesty?"

I am a HUGE proponent of integrity and honesty in ALL aspects of life and of course this includes my blog.  When we lose the trust of others it is incredibly hard to rebuild.  For my own well being and conscience I don't think I could ever use someone else's material knowingly without giving them credit in some way on my blog.  It's in part to this that I don't read others reviews prior to reading a book myself.  I will scan down to find the final rating someone gave but I won't read the whole review.  When I do it inevitably cripples my own thoughts when I try to write my own review and I never want to come across as just spewing out what someone else said regarding their thoughts on a book.  NOT COOL!  

However, where the line is gray for me is when using pictures from the internet.  I became aware during a twitter discussion a few months ago that Google images are also copyrighted.  UGH - I had no idea that I needed to source those pictures when using them.  And I've used them not just for my blog but also kids school projects and so on.  Oops!!  How do you know, if it's not marked otherwise, what is and what isn't copyrighted material online?

Lesson learned I suppose is just to cite the source and when possible leave a link to the source on ANYTHING you find on the internet.  

Speaking of which.....I suppose I need to have some sort of "copyright notice" on my own blog.  I gotta be honest though, some of this "legal" stuff just irritates me as it takes away from the fun stress-free book blogging atmosphere.  If everyone could just be honest this wouldn't be an issue...

Interested to read ya'lls thoughts about this subject and your experiences.