<p>In my blog, I post texts from my textbook, or from my professors lecture (rarely). My textbooks are e-books, and sometimes it is difficult to read them in my smart phone. However, if I post the texts in my blog, it is much easier to read. Also, I can compile all my notes, and make it more organize. I do make it clear where I got the information. My blog has low traffic, and I haven’t received any monetary benefit from it. </p>
<p>I don’t think I’m harming the textbook publishers since if students are using that same book, they would still need to buy the text to do their homework (if prof assigned the exercises at the end). I don’t even post everything–about 70% per chapter. </p>
<p>Should I be worried?</p>
<p>The thing is, I realize I am more motivated to study this way because I am not just passively reading.</p>
<p>If this comes to the attention of a publisher, you will get a letter. If you persist, eventually you will get sued.</p>
<p>I once worked on a case where the infringer was a young person not making much money from the infringement, but ducked the lawyers and continued on after being notified. The ultimate settlement for that case involved $1000 payments to the company twice a year for five years. Intended to be a pain in the butt.</p>
<p>You clearly know you shouldn’t be doing this, so stop it.</p>
<p>Simply citing your source, and the lack of monetary gain, is not enough to meet copyright standards. The question is whether you are an educator using it under Fair Use provisions (you aren’t) and whether you are denying the original producer economic gain by altering or distributing their work. Also, using 70% of a work, even if it were under Fair Use, is really not okay at all. </p>
<p>I would stop, just to have a clear conscience. The chances of a publisher actually finding this and prosecuting you are not great, but it isn’t zero, either. Additionally, your academic integrity is damaged by your willingness to engage in this behavior. If you can read and organize the material better in electronic format, use Notes or something to do it, not your blog. Which is public dissemination, whether or not you have readers.</p>
<p>You can also just use a different blog website which allows for the use of private posts. I used to use livejournal, which was good for this. I also used blogger and could have sworn there was a way to change the privacy settings… you might want to look again.</p>
<p>I am not sure that this would resolve the copyright issues, I don’t know enough about that to say. But it’s better than posting it publicly.</p>
Most large companies have a service to track use of their copyrights (to prevent dilution) and the most obscure uses do get caught.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of the bail bondsman in North Dakota whose business card is a “get out of jail free” card. Yep. He got caught and received a cease and desist letter.</p>
<p>I am a member of a board where some members have been contacted by publishers over copyright issues. The rule there is that a link to the original source that shows the actual url must be included and no more then 15 lines may be a direct quote.</p>
<p>Posting it privately on a public entity (the web) is still copyright infringement. The law looks at it this way — can the people who CAN reach that post avoid paying by reading your post instead? If I post 70% of a NYT bestseller, those who can reach the post can avoid buying the book. Hence, copyright infringement. </p>
<p>Honestly in almost all cases, if you suspect it’s copyright infringement, it probably is. But maybe somebody here is a lawyer, not a librarian And Indiana is correct^^^ ; the amount used is really important.</p>
<p>also, companies consider the matter of “if I let you do it, I have to let the next person do it and my property is no longer private or worth anything.”</p>
<p>This sounds like copyright infringement whether you make it ‘private’ or not since the whole reason you’re doing it in a blog is to make that text available to others. By making it ‘private’ you’re still infringing - you’re just trying to make it more difficult to get caught.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand why you’d put this in a blog in the first place - it doesn’t make sense. I understand you writing it out in notes for yourself to make yourself process the info but not the part about making it available to other people.</p>
<p>If you just quit doing it then you don’t have to worry about it and you’d be doing ‘the right thing’.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just use Word or another word processing application. Then you can still read it on your computer, print it out, etc., but it’s for your use only.</p>
<p>Edit: nevermind. I see that you’re trying to put the info on your smart phone. Maybe just use a laptop.</p>
<p>You don’t need to make it private, just set up the posts so that they go public on some future date–and delete them before that date. Only you can see posts that aren’t published yet.</p>
<p>It seems to me that if you can make the posts available only to yourself, there is no real problem. A publisher might say that it’s still infringement (just like they might say ripping files from your own CDs is, even for your own use), but if it isn’t searchable, they won’t find out.</p>
And Indiana is correct^^^ ; the amount used is really important.</p>