I have chosen to embed a Creative Commons license on my blog. More specifically, an Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
What that means is people can’t use my work for commercial uses, and when they copy it they have to use it in its original form.
But they can still use my ideas and my work and things like that… as long as they say it’s mine.
As much as I hate being selfish, on the internet with creative property, covering your tail is more of a survival technique if you want to keep your work linked to you. With this license, I have a direct control over how my work is distributed, which effectively gives me more authorial control as I’m producing, which reflects back on the quality of the content itself.
I see the license I chose as kind of fence-sitting.
Apparently I'm also a small child.
On the one hand, I absolutely hate the idea that creativity, expressionism and ideas can be commodified. Call me a hippy. But I think ideas should be property of the universe, maaaaan.
Got tofu?
Apparently Jefferson agrees with me in his conspiracy to keep ideas safe- however, as Garcelon explains, the point of Creative Commons is not to entirely oppose the idea of copyright; what is essentially and perpetually ‘free’ can only be so if that’s what we choose. Enter copyleft, the idea of giving people moderated permission to copy.
Concepts of creativity are essentially immaterial, and once they are put behind glass cabinets as untouchable relics they take on roles of material things, casting work ipso facto as property. By allowing others to use my work, theoretically my ideas are given reign to flow through the internet and encourage the nice idea of the internet as an open discussion space where everyone has equal access to everything so long as they are plugged in. (Unless you live in China and are particularly fond of google… awkward.)
On the other hand, for reasons I have mentioned before, ( specifcially in my last core post Buy My Blog,) I don’t think the internet is a rounded discussion space.
And on that same token, because of the sheer mass of people lining up to consume and share all this content, not everyone can get a turn with everything. Lawrence Lessig explains this in a lovely metaphor that makes this whole thing simple:
‘Stuff in the commons is not necessarily free. The streets can be closed; or you might be required to get a permit to hold a protest before city hall. The parks might ban people in the evening. Public benches get full.’
It’s true. Anyone is allowed to walk on the pavement. But if the pavement is full then some people are going to miss out.
Web 2.0 can’t truthfully call itself a ‘free culture’ vehicle, either- the amount of advertising, moderation, ownership, slogans and concepts that saturate our browser windows contradicts its concurrent encouragement (alliteration, anyone?) of user-generated content. Chat to Armin Medosch and he’ll say the same thing.
The final flaw in this Hippy ‘Ideas for all, maaaaaan,’ notion is that with creative content, the idea essentially IS the product. It’s all ways of expressing ideas in a way unique to you, which gives it the title ‘creative’ in the first place. If other people are able to copy it then they can’t really call it their own creative content. Because it isn’t. And even if you give them permission to use it, it still entirely defeats the purpose of them being unique and original and CREATING these things in the first place.
Having said all that, I still chose to embed the license. In the end, nothing is perfect. The internet is not a perfectly equal discussion space where ideas and frolic from browser to browser untainted. Like I said- I’m fence sitting. I belive ideas should be free and shared but also am a realist and understand that the internet is not a wondrously utopian share platform free of commercial interest.
So I see this as the closest I can get to encouraging a free flow of ideas whilst protecting myself against the evil commerciality that works for The Man, maaaaan.
Let's get awkward... 