Getting Started (First things first )
You need to attribute the author
When preparing material for upload to the HOP website, first consider: who wrote the text? who took the photos? If you are the author of something, put your name (or a pseudonym) on it. If it is sourced material, you need to acknowledge that and give proper attribution.
There’s such a thing as copyright, the rules for which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the essence of which is that whoever creates something gets to control how and where it is published or copied.
Publishing material without the permission of its rightful copyright holder can make life very complicated for an offender. Some entities monitor and protect their copyright more vigorously than others.
HOP doesn’t need or want to attract negative attention, so let’s all be conscious about properly licensing and attributing sourced material. Sourced material is material you did not create yourself, but found somewhere.
To get permission to copy or re-publish something, you must contact the source, explain what you want to publish and in what context, and negotiate terms for a limited copyright to cover that use. Sometimes payment will be requested, sometimes permission will be granted through a Creative Commons license.
RULE OF THUMB: When you see the words “All rights reserved”, that means no grabbing. Be polite.
Attribution
Usually, when copyright permission is granted, how to word the attribution (credit) is also dictated. Sometimes an entire layout, text + images, is covered. More often, photo credits will be attributed separately from the text.
RULE OF THUMB: Always give credit where credit is due. And, don’t forget to give every photo a photo-credit — even if the photographer is “unknown”, you need to tell people where you got that image from.
Hyperlinks
The power of the world wide web resides in the simple concept of hyperlinks. Like magic, every cypher and every pixel in any given website can open passage to any other location in the world wide web. When you want your audience to read something that already exists elsewhere on the web, don’t try to copy/paste that thing, just LINK to it! It couldn’t be easier.
RULE OF THUMB: Where and when ever you can, use hyperlinks to avoid hassles.
Examples
Vlad, our Romanian team leader has found a couple of articles he’d like to upload to the Romanian Orthodoxy section. One is a Wikipedia entry. The other, an article published on line by a site called Hypocrite Reader.
Case I: Wikipedia
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
Wikipedia makes it easy to share content. In this case, he wants to share the whole article. The left sidebar of any Wikipedia page offers the options:
When you choose Download as PDF, all necessary attributions are automatically included.
To learn more about Wikipedia’s handling of copyright and attribution, scroll to the footer of any Wikipedia page, where you’ll see the sentence: Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Follow that link to read the License and learn how to attribute text content outside of making a PDF copy of the whole article.
Images are attributed separately. Click on an image to get its info. It will open in a window that provides everything you need for downloading or linking to the image and properly crediting its author.
Case II: Hypocrite Reader
//hypocritereader.com/52/tale-of-dracula
At the bottom of this article, it’s clearly stated: Copyright © 2014 Hypocrite Reader. All Rights Reserved.
In this case, the choice is either:
- contact Hypocrite Reader and negotiate a limited copyright agreement to license HOP to reproduce the article; or
- publish a brief paragraph stating the importance of this article to the topic at hand, and LINK to it.
