Eeek! What can I publish safely?

Well, first off, you can showcase your original works that don't contain anyone else's copyright or enrage the petty paper-pushers of Peleliu or Egypt, while you're still within their legal range. Then look for material in the public domain, which varies from country to country. The average remains 95 years in most western nations.

In the US, copyright on post-2002 works expires 70 years after the death of the author. For corporate works, the limit's 95 years after publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first. Disney has been instrumental in pushing those limits back, as it struggles to keep control of Mickey Mouse, born in 1928, as well as the slightly younger Goofy, Pluto and Donald Duck.

Chris Sprigman, Counsel to the Antitrust Group, points out that public domain works foster creativity. Shakespeare borrowed the plot line of Romeo and Juliet, for example, later re-envisioned by Leonard Bernstein's in West Side Story.

Ironically, many of Disney's animated films are based on Nineteenth Century public domain works, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book (released exactly one year after Kipling's copyrights expired).

Borrowing is ubiquitous, inevitable, and, most importantly, good. Contrary to the romantic notion that true genius inheres in creating something completely new, genius is often better described as opening up new meanings on well-trodden themes.

Be mindful of your image and video sources, but also of deploying others' words. We've talked a lot about the power of quotes. They can illuminate your material, connecting it to the larger world. Just make sure you don't tread on any toes in the process.

The US, like many western nations, has a fair use exemption. This allows commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. It's a complex thing, which trips up even IP lawyers. So I'll shared the super-general rule-of-thumb hammered home in my media law class at university: Don't quote more than 25 consecutive words of an article, attribute the comment and you'll probably be OK.

Watch the ratios, however. Twenty-five words of a 50-word blog post could land you in big trouble. Twenty-five words of a 5,000-word New Yorker manifesto's safer ground. If you're in doubt, just ask. The web's has made seeking permission a lot easier than tracking down an author via a busy publisher in days past...

Always be extremely careful when borrowing material, even from an open content site. Read the fine print. For instance, both GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and Creative Commons ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) require a republisher to list the license conditions, and give credit to the original author.

Web pioneer Brad Templeton wrote a brilliant article, 10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained. Go read it. Need reassurance? Skip down to number 11 (yes, eleven, he couldn't resist the base-five headline, like so many suckers before him).