As usual, I'm inclined to agree with Steven. While comments may add to (or subtract from) our reputation, we shouldn't attribute any more to them. - Thomas Ho from fftogo

Like the post, disagree with Steven. You own your words, whether they're published on your blog, in your emails, in comments, wherever. Even tweets and FriendFeed messages are published works subject to copyright (as I understand it). - Voyagerfan5761

i am with voyagerfan5761. definitely. - edythe

Perhaps. But under the "NNUTS" premise, forms of writing have already been categorized and there are many famous "dialogues", some philosophical, which arose out of letters, newspaper editorials and such and answers to them. Having been transferred to book form, we study them as part of the Humanities today. Perhaps what we are seeing is the fertile ground for such to occur again....IF and this is a big IF responding is taken as seriously as it was then. - Melanie Reed

O, and btw- if I think some worthwhile idea emerges from a comment I made to someone's blog, I c/p it to my OneNote for further development into an essay. - Melanie Reed

@Voyagerfan @edythe - so what you are saying is that conversation between people is a copyrightable communication? - Steven Hodson

@Steven: When you send a letter to someone, that letter is copyrighted, as I understand copyright. If you are commenting on something, you still retain the rights to your words. The conversation as a whole is not copyrighted, but the individual posts can be. - Voyagerfan5761

I wrote my comment in Disqus; executive summary: Steven, you misunderstand copyright law, and the core issue (beyond the absurdity of how many times this is rehashed in a day) is not a legal one, but a social or ethical one: how do each piece of the social media puzzle work together to make everyone feel like they're a vital part of the big picture? - Mark Trapp

@Mark .. actually I was just trying to point out the absurdity of the point of comments being A) creative content that could be copyrighted B) and that we even care so much about needing to "own" a part of a conversation - Steven Hodson

@Steven: But unless they're just mundane things like "good post" or "where'd you get that pic?", making the comment involved thought. While the ideas the comment author comes up with can't be copyrighted, their expression in words can be. If you can't point to a comment and say, "Those are my words"... - Voyagerfan5761

Steven, they ARE copyrighted. They are protected works under US copyright law. The are original literary works that are made publicly available: that is the core of what is copyright. You or I or many others may give up that right for the purposes of facilitation of discussion (for the record, my content is released to the public "drop me a line if you use it or dont it's cool" domain), but you cannot assume just because it's a comment that the comment writer gave up their rights unless explicitly noted. - Mark Trapp

@Voyagerfan Mark wrote a great comment that expanded on this on the blog post. I will admit that I could very well stand corrected by his comment for which I thank him for taking the time to write but I still want to think about it some more - Steven Hodson

@Mark: Are you a lawyer, or just a legally-minded writer like Jonathan Bailey (author of PlagiarismToday, http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/)? - Voyagerfan5761

Steven, I think it's something that's not going to matter, which I think is very much in the spirit of your post. But I don't think the legal route will get everyone to that point. Voyagerfan: in college, I studied philosophy of law and the nature of my current business (advertising and graphic design) makes understanding copyright financially responsible. - Mark Trapp

oh thank you, this blog post is the most reasonable thing i have seen yet about this issue. That and i release all copyrights to this comment. you can have it- go ahead take it. - Nathan Eckenrode

Steven, thinking a little bit more about this issue: the idea that commenters have a copyright claim is actually pretty normal. When you comment on a big name site (like CNN.com, for example), one of the things you always have to do is to accept a disclaimer waiving your rights to the site to allow them to republish your comments. - Mark Trapp

On top of that, for many software companies, it's policy not to acknowledge ideas in a "feedback" or "suggestions" forum because should you wind up implementing a feature there, and the person can make a claim that you knew about their published work prior to the feature being made, they have a copyright claim. Prominently, Apple, Blizzard and Microsoft hold this policy: you will never get an acknowledgement of an idea of yours due to legal reasons. - Mark Trapp

totally agree with you Steven - no matter what copyright law says, on a very practical level, I simply don't care about my comments being copyrighted, just as I don't care where people decide to discuss my own blog posts. Comments are probably the most ephemeral kind of content we leave on the web - sure I would like it if somebody gave me credit if they use something from a comment I leave, but at the end of the day, I simply don't control that anyway... - Frederic

The final example I can think of is with Wikipedia and sites like it: when you publish to it, even when you're just commenting on an item, you are under the umbrella of "by submitting this, you are releasing your work under the GFDL and you affirm everything you do is licensable under the GFDL." - Mark Trapp

Steven - I think it's more about the value of time than copyright. There is an expectation of: hey, I'm adding to the SEO of this page by leaving a comment which helps sites that are monetized by ads, so how about a little love back from the webmaster? Maybe that comes by following the link to their blog or not using rel=nofollow, etc. However, for those using Javascript to display comments, forget about the SEO value. - TDavid

I can't even put it into words... so I made a bookmarklet to do it for me!! :-) i want people to grab the bookmarklet, then use it to "fix" Stevens original blog post... now I bet people's intellectual property rights are all of a sudden worth fighting for... http://www.mattshaulis.com/win_ext... - Matt Shaulis

Matt, I'm not sure what your bookmarklet did. - Mark Trapp

It changes the word "comment" to the words "blog post". (Or at least it's supposed to... hehehe. Works for me.) - Matt Shaulis

Ahh, I see it now, Matt. Subtle :) - Mark Trapp