Are blogs public domain?

[gsabc]

For the legal eagles around here, a copyright question. Is original material that you post in your own personal blog, or anywhere on the Internet for that matter, considered public domain? My searching comes up with myriad references about posting copyrighted material within your own postings (as in DON'T DO IT!), but nothing about the status of what you've written yourself. So I'm curious.

[TheConfessor]

I'm no lawyer, but I'm confident that the answer is no. It's still your own creation, regardless of what you choose to charge for people to consume it. If a major motion picture had a free sneak preview, would that make it public domain? Obviously not.

[MarleysGh0st]

My searching comes up with myriad references about posting copyrighted material within your own postings (as in DON'T DO IT!), but nothing about the status of what you've written yourself. So I'm curious.

IANAL and the Bored lawyers could go into great legal detail about copyright and fair use. But I'll address a practical matter. Clearly, you're free to post whatever you write, yourself, in your own blog. If that's all you're concerned about, you're fine.

But it's also the nature of blogdom that others may link to your blog and quote from it in their own blogs or elsewhere. They may do so under the limits or fair use...or maybe they don't. If you're writing the Great American Novel or some other work that may have commercial value, the safe approach is not to post it in such a publically-available forum.

[Bob78164]

For the legal eagles around here, a copyright question. Is original material that you post in your own personal blog, or anywhere on the Internet for that matter, considered public domain? My searching comes up with myriad references about posting copyrighted material within your own postings (as in DON'T DO IT!), but nothing about the status of what you've written yourself. So I'm curious.

"Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). If you wrote it, it's copyrighted. Whether you can get any remedy for its unauthorized use is another question altogether. --Bob