Two questions ...
On literary blogs, blogs that contain creative writing, blogs that clearly create a copyright symbol or request on the blog page that copyright should be respected, does a researcher have the right to "research" the contents of that blog (which to me implies copying the content, trasposing it as "data" for the sake of qualitative or quantitative research purposes?
Since all published work is covered under the same US legal statutes, I would say that you could still research the contents and publish under fair use exemptions. However I bow to our legal colleagues greater knowledge. What I wanted to comment on is something I feel has been repeated in a variety of forms in this discussion...the idea of copyright for creative work (i.e. fiction) being somehow more secure then for non-fiction works. I believe that from a creative standpoint it's all the same...published work.
What is wrong or problematic about a researcher simply asking the blog owner if it is acceptable to them if their blog contents become the subject of a research project? Beyond the rules and regs of an ethics research board, what is wrong with simply asking upfront? rather than working surreptitiously, lurking or working from an alias?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking if that's what you want to do as a researcher. I have no human subjects related problem with asking...my issue is more philosophical in that I don't want "in the wild" research to become a study of outliers, or only those that want to be studied. Also don't forget that "asking" can, though doesn't always, change the phenomena...which is why I don't want to do experimental research. I guess my biggest question here is what would be the problem with working surreptitiously, lurking, or working from an alias, is the issue copyright or the amount of risk...because they really are very different issues that shouldn't be confounded. Lois