Web Business Marketing Blog

This is a stolen article from Zenhabits. Feel free to steal it forward.

The open-source movement for software has created impressive applications, such as some of the world’s leading content management systems. It has spinoffs on the internet and blogosphere , where Creative Commons offers various licences to authors enabling them to release their work while protecting their author rights.

The benefits of having knowledge in the public domain are paramount. Free access allowing everybody to build upon knowledge takes control away from governments, media, companies and institutions. It improves democracy, empowers individuals and develops the world. It enriches us all. It should be the default option.

If you feel likewise, please join the change and take the pledge to release your blog or website in the public domain. Joe Pulizi from Junta42 has taken the step.

Copyright release & attribution

I hereby release my copyright on this content. From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, improve it, or tear it apart. It’s OK. :) If you choose to use any of my articles, attribution is the only requirement. A link back to the original would be nice but optional. 

Why I’m releasing copyright
I’m not a big fan of copyright laws anyway, as they inhibit the free flow of information and ideas.

Copyrights are often touted as protecting the author, but in many cases the author gets very little while a publisher makes most of the money. I’m trying this experiment to see whether releasing copyright hurts or actually benefits the creator of content.Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing, especially if you’re promoting an idea or a cause.

If someone wanted to share my content with 100 friends, I don’t see how that hurts me. My work is being spread to many more people than I could do myself. That’s a plus, as I see it.

If someone wants to take my work and improve upon it, as both scientists and artists have been doing for centuries, that’s a wonderful thing, in fact the ultimate form of flattery. If they can take my favorite posts and make something funny or inspiring or thought-provoking or even sad … I say more power to them. The creative community only benefits from these derivations and inspirations.

This isn’t a new concept, of course, and I’m freely ripping ideas off here. Which is kinda the point.

Counter arguments and all that
There are a number of objections that will likely be brought up to this idea, and while I can’t possibly answer all of them, here are a few of my responses in anticipation:

1. Google rank will go down. My understanding is that Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates on other sites, when it comes to PageRank. I don’t know how much of a penalty that is. If people duplicate my content (which they already are, even without permission), it’s possible that my PageRank will drop and people will have a harder time finding my content on Google search. But if they’re nice about it, and provide me more inbound links, that’ll have the opposite effect.

Moreover, who knows whether the extra impact of spreading your ideas through multiple channels will not have more impact than any reduction in PageRank? And, will people really make verbatim copies, or derive articles? In the sizzling blogosphere, the latter is more likely than the former.

2. You’ll lose revenue. This objection assumes that you’re blogging for money, and while there is nothing wrong with that, many bloggers aren’t. It further assumes that visitors would have bought your eBook or whatever if it hadn’t been freely distributed. Finally, nothing prohibits you to release your blog, but publish a print book or eBook from it elsewhere.

3. Who knows what people will do with your work? Someone could take my work, turn it into a piece of … baloney. They could translate it with all kinds of errors. They could … well, they could do just about anything. But that kind of thinking stems from a mind that wants to control content … while I am of the opinion that you can’t control it, and even if you can, it’s not a good thing. And the kind of person who would abuse your work will probably do that anyway, irrespective of this release.

Conversely, someone could take my work and take it to the next level. They may extend the concepts and make it even more useful, to even more people? Release control, and see what happens. People are wonderful, creative creatures. Let’s see what they can do. But derivative works should no longer bear the original author’s name, only an attribution.

4. What if someone publishes a book with all your content and makes a million dollars off it? I hope they at least give me credit. And my deepest desire is that they give some of that money to a good cause.

Conclusion

When to consider a Creative Commons licence? If you’re blogging for fun, business or reputation, a Creative Commons licence will do more for you than submitting to article directories. What can be the attraction to other bloggers of making a verbatim publication of your article with an author box?

Creative Commons enables bloggers to pick up your article and take it to the next level (up or down). That should improve the quality of the blogosphere well beyond the social bookmarking posts often observed. If a clone article gets more coverage and comments than its original - so what?

Finally, consider this. If you write to make an impact, either as a communicator, a marketer or a social entrepreneur, what’s going to be the bigger force? A freely circulating idea whose time has come, or an eBook for sale, with copyright strings attached?

For a few inspirations on open source
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Homesteading the Noosphere
The Magic Cauldron
All available freely from this link

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