Even though the Internet/Web is publicly accessible, contrary to popular assumption this is not a “public domain” environment. I’ve had many clients over the years that have tried to use photos and text from other sites using the excuse “public domain” — wrong. Some were even shut down when the copyright holders filed a formal DMCA complaint.

Now with Blogging being so popular and easy to use, many think they can post e-mails sent to them privately, copy articles or other’s Blog posts and simply copy-n-paste them into their own Blog as a post — wrong again.

If you use another persons work whether it be graphic or text in your e-mails or Blog, you need to ask their permission to do so. Copyright is in place upon creation. For example, this post is copyright protected because I am the author/creator.

I don’t mind if onliners use my works, articles or contents of my sites as long as they ask and give the proper references when they do. Even with my Free Weekly E-mail Etiquette eTips, which I created specifically because folks ask for easy content for their company newsletters, credit must be given where due.

However, too many think the Web is too big for me to find out, they steal my work or plagiarize my articles and guess what? I shutdown a handful of sites run by folks who believed that each and every week.

As far as the dissemination of private e-mails — besides the copyright issue — to do so is simply rude. Beyond the lack of ethics and trust that forwarding or making public an e-mail that was sent to you privately will imply, here again, copyright is still in full force.

The bottom line is you don’t use, forward or copy anything created by someone else without their permission to do so. Check out my article on the topic:

Online Copyright Myths for more info and govern yourself accordingly.

Some More Info for You:

1. Copyright Refresher
2. Use Your Dot Com for Business E-mail
3. E-mailing for Help? E-mail Etiquette Matters — Allot!