Literally. Actually about a dozen of them.

A Lion sitting in peace with a lamb has been the symbol of peace for about 2000 years. Jesus said we would have peace ‘when the lion laid down with the lamb’.

I was flipping through the channels. Nothing was on. And I mean nothing. I mean I like mind-numbing saturday afternoon TV like the rest of America, but this was a particularly bad day.

And then I came across this show on Animal Planet. Called Heart of Lioness or something.

It showed this adult, female lion who had adopted a young, lost calf. Not EXACTLY a lamb, but close.

Close enough for the local African tribes people to come out in droves to see this miracle.

The most feared predator on the continent helping and nurturing a young calf.

Unheard of.

For weeks this went on. Neither of them eating. People showing up in buses and jeeps daily to gawk and photograph this anomoly of nature.

Or was it a sign of things to come? We will see. We can hope that peace is coming.

Of course, several weeks into the vigil, a big hungry male lion came lumbering in and ate the poor ‘lamb’ for a mid-morning snack.

The scientist involved with this strange phenomenon suggested that the lion had had a poor family life, and she was somehow making up for it by adopting this poor lamb.

An interesting story to say the least.

A great video, made way before any of it actually happens.

It has a lot to do with what your role as a Yovia Blogger or Citizen Journalist is:

http://mccd.udc.es/orihuela/epic/

Swipe a photo or some text, go to jail?

Before you copy an image or lift a bit of text from a web page to post on your blog or site, take heart: the source material is more likely than not copyrighted and in a worst-case-scenario, you could face fines of up to $1,000,000 and 10 years in prison.
Understanding copyrightAlthough you could face severe penalties for using someone else’s content without permission, the real point of copyright, is designed to let the people who create content, control the use if it.

Time energy and money goes into creating original, quality content, and it should not be simply stolen.

There are three types of copyright that do apply to online publsihers; Creative Commons, Fair Use and Public Domain.

Fair use

Fair use is basically your ability to use another’s creations without permission. There are lots of grey areas in fair use, but there are a few key rules of thumb. Abiding by them doesn’t guarantee you’re free from concern, but it does lessen your chances of being in flagrant violation.

• Copy only what is necessary to make your point (a quote or a paragraph, not much more than that) and always cite sources. These are rules all of us learn in school to avoid plagiarism, so they shouldn’t be hard to obey! Don’t worry, your citations don’t have to be as formal as they were in school. Just enough information to let readers know who the original author is.
• Guidelines of web etiquette suggest that you include a link to the source if you’re using material available on the Internet.

It’s worth noting that if you are creating a work that’s merely similar in nature to something that’s already out there—such as rewording other pieces in your own tone—you’re not technically infringing on copyright. But few readers will enjoy reading rehashed, old material, so always add some originality and thought. It’s one more way to avoid copyright infringement.

For copyrighted material, if your use can stop the original author from earning money—such as if you compete with the author in the same market and your use costs him/her customers or clients—it is not allowed. In general, using another’s work for commercial purposes is frowned upon. But there are many blurry lines for this in copyright law. Just be smart. If your work includes somebody else’s material, makes you money, and potentially costs the author, or if you have a gut feeling your commercial use is unfair, don’t do it. If possible you can contact an author for permission, which is the best way to ensure you’re not infringing or causing harm. Some consider this the fair and right thing to do regardless of circumstance—but that’s up to you.

Some other fair use considerations:

• If an author clearly expresses that all rights are reserved and no-one has permission to use his/her work, it’s not available for usage. Many authors who state this also say you can contact them for permission.
• If you use another’s work in a way that twists the original meaning or purpose/intent of the material, you are in the wrong.

To recap, your best bets are to: Credit, credit, and credit again. If you want to be safe, ask the author. Use only what you need. Don’t misuse the material. If you infringe, there is a high likelihood you can be caught, especially if the author is vigilant about using search engines or online plagiarism tools to check.

Creative Commons

Because copyright law is not entirely clear or effective in the digital age, a new form of rights and license management called “Creative Commons” has arisen. You may see Creative Commons notices or “some rights reserved” and “no rights reserved” logos on sites that are governed by Creative Commons licenses. Essentially, Creative Commons provides a number of straightforward licenses authors may grant to express how their content can be used. The licenses include:

• “No rights reserved”, which means a work is “public domain”. Public domain boils down to the absence of copyright restrictions.
• “Some rights reserved”, which means the author denies some types of usage. Specific Creative Commons licenses can be found here. If in doubt about material with a “some rights reserved” license, contact the author for clarification.

You can find more information about Creative Commons—including a useful FAQ—at www.CreativeCommons.org

Never forget: Check copyright or Creative Commons notice on sites. Obey them. Ask questions if they are unclear. If there is no copyright or Creative Commons notice, the work may still be subject to copyright.

Public domain

Publich domain works are usually clearly marked as such—or are so old their copyright has expired (always double check anyway; even works that are many decades or centuries old can be owned by estates or others who hold the rights). When there is no explicit notice and no notice of public domain, still treat the work as if covered by fair use. That way, you’re at less risk and the author is treated fairly.

Sources:
Creative Commons
Wikipedia: Creative Commons
Pierce Law: Copyright on the Internet

Note: This article may be distributed, provided a link to it’s origin is provided.

This copyright research has been partially funded by Mochila a free marketplace of freevrights managed article, photos and video.

Today’s movers and shakers, according to Yahoo Buzz, look for O.J. Simpson to be in the news.

Rohit Bhargava has created 5 steps for effective SMO, as outlined in his blog. Rohit writes:

For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site’s performance on organic search listings. While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs. Here are 5 rules we use to help guide our thinking with conducting an SMO for a client’s website:

1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
3. Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you
4. Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
5. Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube’s idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

There are many other “rules” and techniques that we are starting to uncover as this idea gets more sophisticated. In the meantime we are always on the lookout for new ideas in Social Media Optimization to encourage even better thinking. Perhaps we may even see the rise of entire groups or agencies devoted to SMO in the future …

To this, we would like to add:

6. The quality of the content drives the whole campaign. SPAM dies, as it should, but clever, funny, even controversial content travels quickly.

There is definitely a difference between a good comment or post, and a SPAM comment. You need to make good comments. Here would be an example:

Hey, I saw the funniest video of Britney Spears. This fat dude is dressed up like her and they dubbed over the VMA Award performance:

http://www.hollywoodsquared.com/videos/britney-spears-vma/

A bad comment, or one that is going to be removed or blocked would be:

Check out our great video site.

http://www.hollywoodsquared.com/videos/britney-spears-vma/