From: anthonybailey	Date: April 21st, 2004 05:55 pm (UTC)		(Link)

The above was a bit dry and formal and without chatty preamble, I know - I wanted it there so I can reference it from elsewhere in this blog. I'll do the chatty bit here in the comment.

What the above means is that you don't have to worry about the copyright status of anything I originate on here. In the unlikely event that you ever want to, you can happily cut and paste my writing, chop it around, print it out, make it into a major motion picture, keep it in your browser cache, set it to music, etc.

I suspect that as a matter of course you would kind of assume as much about this and all the blogs you read on a daily basis and therefore you weren't worried in the first place - that if I put it up on the web for general consumption I shouldn't be difficult about how the content is reused. That's great. In fact, that is the norm I would like to encourage amongst the public. I think that the ways things are, that anything written by anybody is automatically their copyright and therefore can't generally be used without express permission until they've been dead plenty long, is a bit of a silly situation. I'd love to see a return to a regime where if you wanted to keep copyright in a particular piece of work, you had to say so explicitly - not the current, other way around.

So, I'd prefer it went without saying. But it doesn't, and I'm a pedant - one who is very interested in the problems of copyright in the digital age, and to working solutions for those problems. One of the plausible working solutions right now is to make a declaration like the above when it is convenient to do so. And it is convenient here, since I've got a whole blog of stuff I can deal with in one go.

Creative Commons, by the way, is an organisation "devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share." They do this by providing a variety of shrink-wrapped, ready-to-go legal gubbins, together with advocacy and some associated technology and conventions. The public domain dedication and logo linked and used above are one example; there are also a whole load of "Some Rights Reserved" licenses that you can use if you want to put some restrictions on the use what you make, such as requiring attribution, noncommercial use, exact copying but no changes, share and share alike, and so forth.

Those other options are definitely worth looking at if you do something a bit more creative and valuable than just blethering on a blog like this. For myself, I decided against any kind of "Some Rights Reserved" license, or other interesting alternatives such as primarily public domain, purely for reasons of simplicity. These issues are currently much too complicated. I don't want to add to the mess.

	From: pavlos	Date: April 21st, 2004 08:16 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I disagree. I expect material that I post to be used "in good faith", meaning reused and enjoyed freely, but not plagiarised, or altered to misrepresent me. I consider these implied rights of the authors of free publications. Putting material in the publiic domain condones these activities.

Of course this is all academic as we're unlikely to make use of copyright on LJ entries. But I think it is unwise to put things in the publc domain (as opposed to a very permissive written or implied license) in a context where others use copyright.

	From: anthonybailey	Date: April 22nd, 2004 01:39 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I mostly concur with the first part of your statement regarding expectations. I also expect material to be used "in good faith". However, I judge that using copyright law as a means to enforce this may do more harm than good. I suspect that societal norms, and (more rarely) the codification of such norms through other specific laws, are a better way to achieve this.


With respect to plagiarism: I believe the literal definition is the use of something without attribution. Credit where credit is due is reasonable, but I'm not sure it's worth trying to encode. I don't mind not getting the maximum credit for my work, and I don't consider it my duty to ensure that a reader can always track down the original source of material I write when the means seems to involve an unnecessarily burdensome obligation on those who republish the material. I did consider a Creative Commons "Attribution" (BY) license, but I find its formalisation awkward: I am happy to let the party republishing the material decide whether or not it is worth giving credit, and in what way.

The other flavour of plagiarism is falsely attributing authorship, either implicitly or explicitly. I consider that to be rather different, and the same sort of bad behaviour as changing the content in some significant way and misrepresenting it as being verbatim from the original author.

Now, I certainly don't like misrepresentation, because in general I don't people to say things that aren't true. But, we already have a set of norms (and, in extreme circumstances, laws) to deal with this problem in all other contexts. Why do we need copyright in order to deal with the special case where the issue under dispute is who created something?


Thanks for the comment: it has provoked me to think about the matter further. However, having done so, I do find myself in general disagreement with the second part of your opinion. It seems that you are advocating the use of copyright law - legislation that exists in order to incentivise certain kinds of creativity - in order to enable creators to impose with force of law their expectations of behaviour on others, and that the rationale is "everyone else is doing it, so you should to." I am not convinced.

(I do note that in the case of software, where this legal hack - copyleft - is very deliberate, and the question reduces to "which is better for the world, GPL or BSD?", I often swing the other way, because I think there are other specific issues and behaviours involved in that particular case. Similarly, for works of more value to the author the complication of CC licenses, rather than the K.I.S.S. public domain dedication, begin to seem more worthwhile.)

	From: pavlos	Date: April 22nd, 2004 11:35 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I do take an "everyone else is doing it" view with copyright, but I feel my justification for this needs explaining:

Bad justification: Copyright is beneficial to authors such as myself. It is detrimental to society in various ways, but my own personal copyright is not especially harmful, and everyone else is doing it, so i go with the flow. This would be the same as saying: Products created by exploiting people, damaging the environment, or killing animals are desirable, and my personal consumption isn't worse than everyone else's so I'm happy to consume them.

Good justification: Copyright is harmful to society in various ways, but it's beneficial to authors. I support changing copyright (and other IP) laws to be more in favor of society. However, this change should apply to everyone. In the meantime I will continue to use copyright law because I don't want to be the "sucker"' compared to the pro-copyright guys. By analogy, I may for ethical reasons demand legal changes to stop creating products by exploiting people, damaging the environment, or killing animals. I don't consider it a solution to simply not buy these products because that allows the social-minded people to placate their conscience, at some material loss, while the individualists are free to perpetuate the problem.

So that goes for whether or not an anti-copyright person should use copyright or not in general. I take that sort of "we campaign for sharing but in the meantime we reserve our rights" approach for all sorts of Left vs. Right confrontations. For example I believe that everyone should pay for the NHS through taxes, not only socially-minded people through charity.

I agree with your thinking that in the case of a blog the convenience of public domain may outweigh permissive licensing. But then again there is the case of whose journal another user has extensively plagiarized and claimed as her own (i.e. that the events happened in her life.)

	From: pavlos	Date: April 22nd, 2004 11:38 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Should read: There is the case of jinxremoving whose journal...

	From: anthonybailey	Date: April 25th, 2004 11:40 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Well, it is not unusual for me to be a sucker for trying to be a little more pro-active.

I do think that the incidental protection against misrepresentation granted by copyright is both slight and also far more trouble than it is worth: that societal norms are almost as effective and much more appropriate than legislature here.

I also believe that in this particular case, setting a good example when convenient helps rather than hinders campaigning for change.

But I think that like many differences in opinion, this is one of degree only.

	From: anthonybailey	Date: May 30th, 2009 01:42 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	CC0

When first published this entry contained just the public domain dedication. Creative Commons have since come to recommend use of the CC0 waiver, so I added that to this page in May 2009.