La Muselivre

I think that the development of looser copyright norms in the blogosphere is a wonderful thing. Blogging is already quite time-consuming; imagine having to seek permissions for lengthy excerpts or images. And copyright holders might charge fees for the use of their materials, making use cost-prohibitive. Of course, one could play it safe, with very cautious excerpts and no images except copyright-free ones. But this can make posts less complete, less interesting, less snazzy. Having to paraphrase rather than quote directly will take more time, and perhaps make bloggers more reluctant to dash off a post on a particular issue.