There are a number of sites that explain various legal topics in less-legal terms which you may find useful. First is http://www.nolo.com. Click the "Patents, Copyright & Art" tab then choose Copyright. There you'll find informative articles on fair use, the rights of copyright owners, and tips for webmasters on getting permission to publish others' work.
This page, at http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html, debunks common myths about copyright relating to online publication. (There are actually 11 myths discussed but I'll leave it up to Brad to explain.)
Copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com) is a handy, free tool that allows you to see if other web sites have plagiarized your content. You simply enter the URL of your content, and it will show you other web pages that have phrases that match the text on your site. It's fast — and I've discovered other sites stealing my work on more that one occasion (including a Fortune 100 company that should have known better.) The problem with Copyscape is that it only checks one page at a time — if you have thousands of pages, checking them all gets laborious.
The same company also runs Copysentry (http://www.copyscape.com/signup.php), an automated version of Copyscape that checks the web for material that might infringe yours on a daily or weekly basis.
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