With SOPA In The News: Marketers Are Going Back To School On Fair Use

Compendium, the world's leading provider of business blogging software, announced today it will offer a free guide to blogging fair use on its website, as recent discussions surrounding the SOPA debate have rekindled bloggers’ interest in the subject. SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, has many marketers concerned, since it could potentially change the internet as we know it. With the concerns brought about by SOPA, many marketers have also begun to think again about other areas of the law that could greatly affect their online strategy, including fair use.

“Because of the high volume of questions we have received regarding fair use, we wanted to create a free resource that would provide credible answers for bloggers and content marketers,” said Frank Dale, CEO of Compendium. “We know that many marketers are faced with tough legal issues every day. With input from Alerding Castor, an expert in business law, our resource will serve as a reference that can be used to distinguish between the proper and improper use of content.”

“We’ve always been mindful of fair use given our industry, but SOPA is making the subject even more important. There’s a constant need to balance nimble and timely content with fair use, and SOPA could make the situation even more delicate,” said Ben Hanson, Internet Content Specialist of Swanson Health Products. .

Compendium’s Fair Use Guide will outline the Fair Use doctrine and will feature basic information on the rights of a copyright owner, so one can better understand Fair Use. It also covers various scenarios that might be considered acceptable fair use, as well as steps marketers can take to make sure they’re not crossing any lines unintentionally.    

"As I read more about the SOPA debate, it made me realize that we need to better understand fair use," said Lindsay Schmitt, Director of Marketing and New Media at The College Network. "We work hard to make sure our company blog provides valuable information for our customers, and we try to always attribute sources. We would certainly not want to accidentally misuse any copyrighted material. However, in this day and age, it's becoming extremely hard to discern what can and cannot be used for our blog content."

For more information on fair use, and to download the guide, please visit http://www.compendium.com/resources/business-blogging-legal-guide/

About Compendium
With over 400 clients, Compendium is the world's leading provider of business blogging software. Now that content marketing is growing to new heights, more companies are creating business blogs or switching to a professional blog platform. Our blogging platform provides the content creation tools and control that you need with an IT-free setup process. Compendium is designed specifically for corporate blogging, offering unique functionality such as moderation workflow, content calendar, Web-to-Post, content importing, complete API, and much more. For more information, visit http://www.compendium.com or http://blog.compendium.com

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Posted in: Going,Marketers,School