Monday, October 13, 2008

Numly Numbers

Ok, this a new one for me. While browsing around for more info for this blog, I ran into Numly Numbers. www.numly.com Numly calls itself a "copyright and license management corporation" that provides electronic serial numbers for digital content. What does that mean?

Basically, if you add original content to the Web, you can use a Numly number to prove ownership of the material. Bloggers can even get a service where a Numly number is generated each time a post is made. This is a way to help prove ownership of content should it be plagiarized. Is there a foolproof way to ensure this does not happen? No, but using Numly numbers could be a step in the right direction.

According to www.numly.com a user can get 100 numbers in a month for $4.95.

3 comments:

Rebecca said...

That's such an interesting idea! I've wondered about how copyright works with digital media. It's almost too easy for people to take things this way. I never would've thought of something like this, but it's definitely a necessity in this era!

Lorena said...

This is a good idea. I looked through the site a bit and it made me wonder how encompassing Numly is. I noticed the site says they have a complete database for what has been registered with them, but do they research to be sure the work is original before assigning a number to it? For example, Turnitin has a means of searching its archives as well as other sources to compare originality. I just wondered if Numly has the same type of capability.

Regina said...

I see the need to protect digital media just as one would protect original, published ideas, but I question receiving 100 copyright protections for $4.95 a month. (I know--applying for a copyright costs money, too!) Today I posted information that looks at blogs and wikis with Creative Commons and Public Domain licenses where authors are willing to relinquish some of their rights, allowing others to change information. I suppose these licensing issues depend on the authors' purposes in posting the information and their desire for the information to remain true.