The copyright notices like those at Copyscape (which also allows you to search and see if your blog has been plagiarized and download a button) and Creative Commons are simply good reminders to your readers that a blogger "owns" his or her writing. To lift someone’s words without permission and/or giving proper credit is plagiarism, pure and simple. Signing up for those copyright services is free, so you have nothing to lose, but they don’t make it "more" illegal to steal your work, and they don’t provide some sort of magical lock that keeps others from lifting your work.
Unfortunately, part of being a blogger is opening yourself up to the possilibility that somebody, somewhere might pass off your work as their own (of course, you open yourself up to that if you publish anywhere, including a book or magazine). If you discover that this has happened to you, you do have legal recourse, but it’s an expensive and complicated option that not many bloggers have the stomach (or wallet) to pursue. It’s a frustrating catch-22, but in my own experience, it’s worth it. The positives of writing publicly far outweigh the risks of occasional theft. Would I stop blogging just to protect my work? No.
If you discover that your work has been taken, a common-sense first step would be to contact the "offender" via e-mail and politely ask them to remove your words, or give you proper credit…and then hope, in deference to the bloggy honor system, they’ll see their mistake and comply.
For more information you can check out the article Questions about Copyright at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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