At SXSW, WebProNews spoke with Attorney Robert Strent of Grubman, Indursky & Shire, P.C. about these very matters. The best scenario for publishers is to always get clearances and permissions. Although most start-ups are not financially able, Strent also advises publishers to seek legal guidance to make sure they are aware of their rights.

He says, “You need to own or control the rights to your content in order to be able to use it.”

You can be certain that you own your content if you have a work made for hire, if you have your employees create it, or if you obtained permission to use it. According to Strent, if you do not own the content or have a legal license to use it, you must have another legal basis for using it.

Many publishers claim “Fair Use” in order to use content, but as we previously reported, it is often misused. If you truly believe that you are protected under Fair Use, you should consult with an attorney to be absolutely certain.

Ultimately, if you have big goals for your content, Strent says you should be proactive now to ensure that you and your content are legally protected.

To clarify, WebProNews spoke with Pat Aufderheide, the Executive Director for the Center of Social Media at American University, and Attorney Michael Donaldson of Donaldson & Callif. According to Aufderheide, Fair Use is a part of copyright law that gives people the right to use other people’s copyrighted material without licensing it, paying for it, or even asking permission for it. However, there are circumstances in which Fair Use is misused.

As Donaldson explains, Fair Use is rooted in the First Amendment. He says, “If you keep in mind the First Amendment origins of Fair Use, you’ll have a good starting point.”

If your argument of Fair Use is tested in court, judges will ask if material was used in a way that was different from the original, and if the material was used in a way to produce a profit. To be legal, it must be used in a free speech way and not a way that takes market value from the original.

Bloggers often receive grief from mass media in regards to quotes and other material. Some of the grief is merited since some bloggers simply copy and paste an article into their blog. While the law is probably not in favor of this usage, bloggers do have the right to pull some quotes, images, and video from publishers, as long as they are used in the right context.

Although the law is vague, Aufderheide says, “I don’t think this is such a thorny area of expression as it might seem..”

How do you interpret Fair Use?

What’s the reason for all this? Some blame the economy and expect the government to bail out the newspapers. U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act to Congress, which would allow newspapers to operate as non-profit organizations if they wanted to. This week, Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington State approved a tax break for newspaper printers and publishers.

Some newspapers blame Google for their struggles claiming the search engine is stealing their content. Search industry leader Danny Sullivan disagrees. He believes newspapers actually get “special treatment” from Google. There are news publications that do not appear in Google news, but so many of the complaining newspapers do. These newspapers also receive a tremendous amount of traffic from Google that many other publications would readily appreciate.

Lastly, some even say the newspapers have created their own crisis. Has the newspaper industry embraced the Internet to its full potential? Could they have approached advertising in a different way that could have produced better benefits for them? Are they monetizing their traffic in the most effective manner?