I find myself deeply puzzled by the anger and angst that some of my most respected blogging friends have expressed lately regarding creative commons licenses in general, and Movable Type’s implementation of those licenses as an option in version 2.6 in particular.
So, dear readers, help me understand why allowing your words to be distributed freely is such a frightening concept, particularly in the context of weblogs.
As someone who’s struggled to get more than one book out under a deadline—and had to live off the fruits of her intellectual and creative efforts for longer than she’d like—I’m certainly not advocating the Swartzian position that profiting from those efforts is a form of theft.
But the CC licensing does not restrict you from profiting from your works. It allows others to distribute your copyrighted work—typically with attribution, and not for commercial use (that appears to be the version most folks choose).
If my weblog content is broadly distributed, with attribution, it helps me. It extends my reputation, makes me recognizable. And if I later choose to write a book that draws from my weblog material, I think it’s that much more likely to have buyers.
Cory Doctorow’s experience with Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom seems to support this idea. While the work is freely downloadable and distributable, it hasn’t stopped him from selling copies of the published work. (Same argument so many use in the context of music distribution—I’m among those who buy more CDs because of the samples of work I download online.)
When I supported myself and my family as an Internet trainer, I made all of my materials available freely online—because I knew that my presentation of the materials was what was valuable. When I bought my copy of Down & Out, I did so in part because I felt it was the right thing to do, but also because I’d much rather read a nicely-bound hardcover book than screen after screen of digital text.
Weblogs are a nice way to read small chunks of content—but I wouldn’t pay for them. I might, however, pay for a work deriving from that content, which is something that most CC licenses do not grant, but that I as copyright holder can create (and profit from).
I think critics are right that it would help if CC provided both sides of the argument on their site. But given that MT is specifically a weblog management system, and that weblogs are a medium based intrinsically on sharing of content (through links at the very least), including CC licensing capability as a part of MT strikes me as a pretty reasonable approach.
In the comments on Tim Hadley’s excellent analysis of the CC licenses, one person asked rather plaintively why anyone would want to use a CC license, and I responded there, pointing to the CC site. I suppose what I’m still looking for is a convincing argument as to why someone wouldn’t want to use the CC license on their weblog. Why shouldn’t the “commons” approach of free distribution of ideas be the default rather than the exception? Can someone pointn me to an example of specific harm—past or anticipated—that they see resulting from these licenses?
A while back, Shelley posted something that confused the issue a bit, by implying that use of a CC license was tantamount to (a) placing a work in the public domain, and (b) renouncing copyright. Neither is true. The example she used, in which she excerpted someone else’s text—without attribution—would clearly violate the terms of most CC licenses. As would her suggestion that “you could even charge for this writing.”
Besides not being an accurate depiction of the impact of a CC license, it also made the error that so many of my students make when they plagiarize on a paper. It confuses the legal obligation of copyright with the moral obligation of intellectual honesty. CC license or no, I’m likely to ask Shelley’s permission before excerpting more than a line or two of her work. And I would always cite her as the source.
Update: Ooops. I goofed. Just noticed that the site Shelley used as an example had used one of the less commonly-used CC licenses, which does in fact dedicate all of the work to the public domain. However, that still doesn’t address the difference between legal and ethical responsibility. While Shelley could legally use Doc’s words under that license, that’s an explicit choice he’s making. And if she does use those words, and fails to cite them, it’s still intellectually dishonest. If she did it on a paper she turned in to me for a class (or in a “briefing document,” as the UK govt did), she’d be called out for plagiarizing. That’s a whole different issue than the legality of using the material…
Jonathon, in his post today, says that CC “does a shithouse job of explaining why people might choose not to use their license … But thatĚs less of an issue, now that Tim Hadley has done the job properly.” But I don’t see that in Tim’s analysis. It’s not a discussion of why you wouldn’t want to use the license—it’s a discussion of what the legal boundaries of that license are.
So…”Jonathon”:http://weblog.delacour.net? Shelley? How ‘bout a “non-shithouse” version of why people might choose not to use the license, that can live side-by-side with the CC discussion of why they should? Not a harangue, or a sky-is-falling piece, but a thoughtful analysis of the potential harm that could come to a writer as a result of adding the license to his or her work.
Ack! Upgraded to 2.6, and now (even though it’s turned on in the preferences), auto-discovery of trackback links doesn’t seem to be working. Even worse, when I manually enter the trackback URLs, it claims to be sending the pings successfully, but they don’t show up at the other user’s site. :-(
Any suggestions on what could be the problem?
I shouldn’t post anything when I’m in the throes of grading because it’s sure to be misunderstood. :-)
But I feel I must respond when Dorothea posts about what she sees as the horrible effects of academia on my otherwise right-thinking brain: ” And yet the system has warped them such that they both get a twinge when somebody else comes out with a perfectly good idea, just because they didnĚt come out with it first.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what I said in my post. What I did say was that I found myself “torn between excitement and envy,” and that I wished I’d had more time over the past few years to explore the topics that I had been so interested in as a grad student. The twinge isn’t that somebody else came up with the idea first—it’s that I want to be able to contribute more to the body of knowledge on the subject than I’ve been able to do.
All my bitching and moaning about academic politics aside, I wouldn’t trade my job for any other. Academia has its warts, sure…and those are what get most of the attention. What gets left out are all the reasons that so many of us work so hard to get here…and to stay once we’re here. So, let me list some of those.
I know Dorothea had a terrible experience her last time through graduate school. But I guess I take umbrage at the characterization of academia as such a wicked, evil place. It’s not. It’s full of people like me, Alex, Jill, Larry Lessig, and a host of others (many still sans blog). And it has no more of the evil, backstabbing, wrong-thinking type of person than any other work environment I’ve been in—from corporate to non-profit.
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