Tony and Suzanne Marriott's Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog

Last night, I was made aware that a member of Active Rain had copied my article "7 reasons why your property won't sell", and was e-mailing it out to his sphere of influence. And while he did have my name at the bottom of the article, in parentheses, it wasn't very clear who the heck the guy in the parens was, nor that the article was written by anybody other than the sender.

So, I looked up the offender on Active Rain (and NO, I'm not going to give you his name), and it turned out that it was a new-ish member, with only a handful of points, and very few posts.  So it might just be that he didn't understand how it works.

I did send him a "cease and desist" e-mail (It was worded nicely but firmly)... and told him that the only way I'd allow the e-mails to continue was with proper credit and sourcing.

To his credit, he e-mailed me back, and said that he thought my name in parens was adequate...but that he would stop sending them out. So he had tried to do the right thing... he just hadn't realized what needed to be done.

So, in an effort to educate others, who might be interested in copying my (or other authors) work... here's what I would expect, in copying my work.

1) If you're an Active Rain member... REBLOG it.  The little green button in the top right of the article, that says REBLOG.. if it's available, that means you already have my permission to reblog it onto your blog. This is the easiest way to reuse an article and it comes automatically with "credit" which states my name, and provides a link back to the article for anyone interested in knowing.

UPDATE:  If you're not going to REBLOG it... using the AR reblog button... then the first think you MUST do, is contact the author for permission.  Attribution (identifying the source) is NOT the same as getting permission to "borrow" the article.  Get permission first.  If you don't get permission... DON'T USE IT!

2) If you're going to copy my work to your e-mail, to send out to others (and yes, I'm flattered that you liked it so much that you wanted others to see it).. I would expect one of a couple of possibilties.   You could write a lead in paragraph... maybe something that says.... "my friend Alan May, of Coldwell Banker recently published this piece on Active Rain, and I thought it was good enough that I should forward it to you." (and make sure that you provide a live link to my blog, or the isp address.)

OR, you could simply put at the end of the article... "Written by Alan May, Coldwell Banker, almay@aol.com" assuming you didn't want to provide a link.  That way, if it happens to go viral, and the Wall Street Journal should want to publish it, they know how/where to find the author.

3) if you're unsure how to go about it ... you should contact me, either by phone, e-mail, or in the comment stream of my blog, as many did, asking for permission to use the article.  Others may feel differently about what credit they'd like.  Ask them.

Most of us, when asked, will be flattered enough that someone's interested enough to copy and redistribute our articles, and has been proper enough to check with us... we'll happily give permission.  Dont' worry if you don't understand it... we'll all be happy to work with you to figure it out.  It's a brave new digital world, and we're all just beginning to feel our way around.

There... that should do it for me.  If others have ideas how "credit" should be given, I'd be open to hearing them.  As for the fella who started all of this... don't worry... I recognize that you tried to do the right thing... or at least you thought that you'd DONE the right thing... no hard feelings... feel free to use it, but please give me proper credit for my own intellectual property.

Thank you for your support.

 

ALAN MAY, Realtor®
Specializing in Evanston Real Estate and North Shore Real Estate
Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, 2929 Central Street, Evanston, IL 60201
847.425.3779      Cell: 847.924.3313      Email: Almay@aol.com

Evanston Real Estate & North Shore Real Estate