Thus far, I have not touched on intellectual property issues because I feel that these have been adequately covered in the media and on campus. The university's policies regarding use of IT resources are also quite clear on copyright. Nevertheless, it doesn't do any harm to highlight this.
The simplest way to make sure that you don't run afoul of the law or an irate blogger is to treat your blog posts as you would an academic paper. (It's okay to be more informal though, that's just the nature of the medium.) Copying and pasting verbatim in a paper is wrong. Similarly, copying and pasting verbatim in a blog is a no-no. What's worse is that it's probably illegal too.
If you find an online article of note which you want to share with your students and readers, quote the most pertinent section. You can indent the relevant paragraph(s). Link back to the source and attribute it. Comment about why you like what you read or what your readers should pay attention to.
Assistant Professor Park Cheolsung's Labour Economics I blog is a good example. You might want to take a look at how he posts. He also suggests a way to access full articles, particularly newspapers:
If you want to read the complete news articles, the best (and the cheapest) way is to use NUS Library E-Resources. Go to NUS Library Homepage and click E-Newspaper. You can read thousands of newspaper articles published around the world everyday.
That said, there is at least one type of content which you can republish, even in full, without seeking the author's permission. Content that has been published under Creative Commons licenses is available for republishing and remixing, as long as certain criteria are met. If you follow Using Module Blogs, you've come across CC content. An article in IDEAS has also featured Creative Commons content too.
I'll share more about Creative Commons in a future post.