Blogging is a dynamic part of the internet information sharing experience, and it is up to everyone to understand the role that bloggers play in sharing information responsibly. Bloggers started in the late 1990’s as an online movement challenging conventional journalism and creating an outlet for personal expression due to the lack of need for conventional publishing support. This explosion led to thousands of new voices in the public forum commenting on any number of subjects at a time. The most important issue that bloggers face is the scrutiny over what they comment on and how they do it. There is no standard convention for the content of blogs so issues like copyright infringement, fair use, ethics, and factual content are all topics of heated discussion in the community.
The most significant question facing bloggers is: What can they safely use and comment on and what is their responsibility to distinguish the line between opinion and fact? Fair use policy does not distinguish a specific amount of content that can be quoted for review. There are guidelines however that state that using only a portion of the content and then linking back to the original source site is a the best rule of thumb. The US copyright office offers the following four categories that must be considered when determining what is fair use for the use of protected materials for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. You can learn more by visiting http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html. 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes 2. The nature of the copyrighted work 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole 4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

By evaluating these points most bloggers can make the right decisions about what they should and should not include in their compositions. There are however less specific guidelines for how bloggers should interact with the traditional media. Because bloggers are not professional journalists, the role that they play in breaking news stories as well as in reporting opinion as news has created rifts between them and the conventional media. Critics argue that without any formal training bloggers often create a sensationalism or a distortion of the facts based on their inexperience and the tendency that they have to include bias into their work. This however can be said of many conventional media outlets as well from FOX news to MSNBC. Bias in the media and opinion being reported as substantive has gone far beyond bloggers in the modern era. The true challenge lies in the lack of any conventional ethical code for bloggers and their lack of accountability. The fact that many people do not consider the reproduction of intellectual property as theft online only exacerbates this issue. In this day and age where people seem more likely to steal content than any other crime, it is important for us to establish rules for the use of information and the sharing of copyrighted works. It is also important however to understand the role that bloggers play in our media and the positive impacts they can have as well as the questions that still cloud the formation of this new community. Bloggers can break stories, reflect opinion and public outrage, all while functioning outside of the constraints of a large corporate base. While fair use and copyright laws should be enforced, it should also be comforting to know that everyone can have a voice as a blogger and that ultimately it is up to every individual to determine what voices they will listen to.