See this guy? This is Neil Benchell. He is one of my favorite people in the world. He does magic tricks, tells jokes, flies airplanes and giant kites, rebuilds antique cars, and makes balloon animals. I’m sure there are some great things I’m forgetting to mention…
I love him because he’s a great guy and he’s super fun to be around.
I met Neil at Friends for Life a few years ago and we bonded over my inability to blow up balloons. Actually, I just about exploded my head trying to blow them up. He was amused.
There is a hard-earned skill involved in blowing up those damn balloons, and Neil had days of entertainment watching me struggle to do it. My head starts to hurt just looking at balloons now.
…but what am I forgetting?! There’s something more to Neil than the funny, magic trick, kite flying, balloon artist.
Oh! YES!! Check THIS out!
Neil is a super smart lawyer. He has a ton of experience with patent litigation, intellectual property, trademark and copyright issues. He’s also an adjunct professor at the Loyola University of Chicago where he teaches a course in patent litigation.
And he’d like to teach us about protecting ourselves in the blogging arena. SCORE!
If you are coming to Friends for Life this year Neil is doing a session on intellectual property for bloggers. He’ll be sharing his insights and experiences in hopes of arming us with information to help protect our blogs and websites. It is on Wednesday morning at 11AM in Monterrey 2/3. I’m sure it will be a packed session, so get there early!
For those that can’t make it, I’m sorry. I’ll take good notes and try to report back.
This should be a really good session. Those of us there will make sure we’re getting the info out to others who can’t attend that session or FFL overall.
One note to Rich: There’s something called Fair Use. Basically, reposting an entire blog or any material isn’t cool and can be troublesome. If they link to some excerpts and link back to the original site, that’s more OK and generally allowed. And that’s also why many recommend that you do only partial RSS feeds that show up in a Reader, so the robots (or people) can’t scan all the content without going to the full blog site where it came from. But I’ll let the lawyer talk on that, as it’s all a controversial and evolving issue in the courts.
Thanks for promoting this, Scott. Can’t wait for this one.
Hey Scott! The pressure is on; your notes had better be good because I’d love to know more about this topic. Unfortunately I won’t be at FFL… but maybe one day… Thanks, Kim 🙂
Would love to hear more about this. Is there any way to broadcast it? Special hash tag for tweets from the session?
Perhaps he’d be willing to do a webinar for Diabetes Advocates.
Wow, wish I could attend FFL! I’d really like to know ways to find out IF things from your blog are being used without your consent. Most of us just happen to find out on accident that it happened; such as when someone else sees it and tells you about it. How do we KNOW when our intellectual property is being used without our consent?
Oh man… I really want to come to this. I’ve found parts of my blog stolen and reposted elsewhere, and it ticks me off. Thanks for the heads up, hopefully I can work it into my 6 month old’s feeding/sleeping schedule
I’ve often wished for some sort of bloggers guide (maybe I should pick up Blogging for Dummies at my local Barnes and Noble?). I always TRY to follow the rules (i.e. if the images aren’t my own, make sure they’re public domain or creative commons, or ask permission) but I’m not sure it’s enough — and sometimes the rules are a little murky. Taking my own photos of printed material is another gray area.
I so wish I could be there, but hope I can learn from you and others who are there. There’s no point in going to jail for trying to help others.
Also, I don’t know if this is part of Neil’s expertise, but I wonder if he can let us know if our “I’m not a doctor” disclaimers really hold water in court…or if those disclaimers extend to the more mundane (i.e tweets). I was extremely cautious in one of my recent blog posts to make sure it was all written as first-person experience and not advice or direction.
So much to think about. Thanks for bringing up the topic.
That’s awesome! I’ve often debated on rather to post my poems on my blog or not. Please see if they will tape it an make an audio or video avalible. I had one of my poems used on another diabetes sight but they took it down before I could say anything. Thanka for posting this Scott.
It would be great if something was posted about this for those who can’t be at FFL for whatever reason – can’t make it, wrong “Type” (LOL), etc.
I know, Sue. I know. I feel bad. I’ll try to figure out some way to get the information out to people.
Please do take good notes and write a post on it! I would be very interested in reading more about it 🙂
Ash
Hey Scott, I can’t go to FFL, but the one thing I’d be interested in learning if you can ask him while you’re there, is “is it legal for other blogs or news sites to repost an article verbatim on their own website, even if they link to your original post”. I used to be a pro photographer and I gave up on making a living at it because everybody just stole my work. I actually set a lawyer out on companies that stole my work to sell their product, because I had fitness celebrities in my portfolio. So this sort of thing really gets under my skin. Thanks man.