Every now and them I check our sites back links to see who is linking to our pages.
Just recently, I came across a site called Topsy. After some research, I found out it’s a search engine powered by twitter users, tweets and retweets.

I was little thrown off at first, because usually when I see a custom url with our site’s name at the end of it, I think user profile or social network. At first glance, I am seeing this is really cool. But I got to thinking. In some form or another our content is being disseminated all over the internet without us knowing about it; this includes content from all creators, from writers on highly regarded blogs, to individual members on sites such as myspace.

As the web becomes more interactive and a forum for people to express themselves, what happens to that information once we hit the submit button. Do we really retain rights to content once it becomes part of the public domain?

Could I say for instance, pull an Associated Press move and aggressively go after anyone who borrows my headline, quote or tweet. I hear the arguments between the independent music artists and the industries RIAA all the time. It gets heated at times, so I know there is tension. But creative content is more than just music. As content creators, everything we publish from videos on youtube to tweets on twitter has creative content value, some more than others.