How to abide by copyright laws on social media

Update: It seems that the artist in question, Lily Allen, has deleted her anti-piracy blog after getting too much heat about areas in which she had infringed upon copyright laws. For a complete update, check out this article on TorrentFreak.

Two interesting items recently came to my attention, both related to copyright issues on blogs and/or Web sites. One relates to a new company formation using the acronym of a larger (but unrelated) organization in their name and Web site, the other is the seemingly hypocritical case of a musician who steals blog material to make a point about musical piracy.

After exploring both of these at great length, it became clear to me that most people (including me) don’t fully understand copyright usage as it pertains to online publications. I’m going to post some thoughts here, but please understand that I am not an attorney, so this is not legal advice. Consider this a dose of common sense in social media.