Is this copyright infringement?

[Betsyanne]

I agree with the other posters. Get an OK directly from the person that wrote it (to republish it) or else just use a quote or two (small ones) from the article.

The rest of the article should be about more articles, or your take on the one article. This makes it more personalized anyway, which should get you more viewers.

[theeventof]

Originally Posted by rjleaman

It's not just a matter of SEO, copyright is a matter of international law.

No, you cannot legally reprint the whole article without express permission to do so.

Quotation marks and/or attribution link can tell the reader (a) you copied the article and/or (b) where it came from orginally, true, but these things don't give you the moral or legal permission to take someone else's intellectual property for use on your own site.

However -- there is a concept called "fair use" that lets you quote a part of the article -- just as much as you need to provide so your readers can understand your critique or follow-up (think of a movie review, for example).

So, in general, you can quote small parts of the material as a jumping-off point for your own unique article. That way, everyone wins: the author who inspired you does not get ripped off, and you don't get letters of complaint filed with Google, your web host, etc.

And, as someone has pointed out, it's better for both readers and SEO for you to do your own thing anyway.

This is exactly right - by using someone else's article - even if you're quoting it - as the sole purpose of your post you are breaking copyright laws. The person must give you express permission to use an entire piece of work.

in any case, I hate seeing entire articles published on other websites even with a link back to the original. What value does that bring that sharing a link on twitter, Facebook, stumble, digg, etc not do? If your sole purpose is to share someone else's work with your followers do it through channels that are already meant for sharing work - not your blog - which is meant for unique content. Not to mention the fact that those outlets will no doubt have larger reach than your blog probably can ever hope to reach.

If however you're using it as a paragraph of an extensive article and you go off on your own unique tangent then it's fine to quote and link back. At least in this case you're providing value to your readers and not jumbling up the web with duplicate content.

[Katalina]

All I can say is that if someone is asking "Is this copyright infringement?" nine times out of ten it is.

[Runninground]

Thanks everyone. This was for a blog I was thinking of starting that brought information about a topic from all over the internet to one place. I'm concentrating on my Website Review blog for the moment though