Why is copyright important to you as a blogger?
Because avoiding copyright entanglements reduces your stress level and helps you offer the best possible content to your readers.
What is the DMCA?
The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, basically says that it's illegal to copy something on the Web without the author's permission.
What is the culturally accepted norm among bloggers?
It's basically okay to copy anything you find as long as the author didn't say it's not okay and you link to the Web page where you found it.
What do search engines like Google think?
Well, they don't actually think - that's still a few years off. :)
But search engines typically ignore or penalize duplicate content. If something is already in their indexes and then a copy of it appears, they tend to rank the copy much lower or exclude it from their search listings altogether.
But they don't mind a brief quote or a link with proper attribution.
