Oh, that certainly would make you feel good. I’m coming to you whenever I have questions.

Hi Mike - your comment was interesting and so true. Now, I have a question. How much usage of other people’s stuff is fair?

A site linked to a post I created, which provided 107 links for entrpreneurs. But the blogger didn’t just stop there. He’d actually copied in full the first 7 links and descriptions from my blog.

I felt a bit cheated, as the small section he copied was an hours work for me. Would I be within my rights to ask him to remove it, jusy because he didn’t copy the full post> Thanks.

I see several issues here.

First of all, the FAIR USE principle which I am familiar with is unique to US copyright law. It is related to, but not the same as, the FAIR DEALING doctrines of the UK and other Commonwealth countries, which I don’t have enough knowledge of to discuss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing

Second, it appears that the blog you are referring to is in Brazil. I don’t have a clue about their equivalent provision, if there is one.

I think you have a right to ask them to remove it. I don’t know if they would have an obligation to remove it.

Other things to consider:
* They’ve used less than 10% of one post and a small percentage of the overall work (your blog).
* They’ve given you a good solid link from a blog that has a Technorati authority of over 200. Their blog is going to be around a while and so is that link.

Thank you Mike - that I didn’t know. So in some cases links like that could be useful then?

That’s my understanding. Links from other sites also improve search engine rankings.