2011-05-13

Why Writing Under A Free License Is A Good Thing

Copyright... the most discussed topic in our time, when it comes to creativity and freedom. I'm respecting the work of others, but I thnk it's important, to respect the will of someone, not to holf information hostage, too.

I read an article today on Buzz. It was the usual (sorry) call for protecting your work etc. I get used to the fact that many seem to think that it's important to protect their content like "My Kitty just went to the toilet...omg wtf". May it be. What I can't, and never will, understand is that other try to convince you to protect your stuff, even if you don't want to.

Look, I have the damn right to spread everything out for free and make the information usable for the public, or just for another blogger. Why not? I use the Creative Commons License BY-SA, which is imho, a good fusion of protecting your credits you're demanding that you will be named as the original author, and protecting our work from being removed from the public, by demanding to spread this, or derived works, under the same license.

For me it's senseless to hide a possible useful information in my blog, where only a limited number of people will ever read it. I get no use out of it, if I hide my precious like Gollum the ring. He may get infinite life, but you won't get that from a simple blog-post, right? :) No, I can't stay serious, because it's funny to think that prohibiting others to use your content, is somehow profitable, unless you're trying to sell something, or your blog is as big as a newspaper and you don't need any credits anymore. Yes right. The CC-License will assure you get the credits, and possible visitors for your blog or website. The prohibited use of your content will get you nothing.

So you want credit? You want visitors? You want to be a good person? Use a free license that demands attribution when resharing and protect that by demanding to publish it under the same license. That will give you visitors, credit and happy people.

[Info about Creative Commons License BY-SA]
[Info about other free licenses]