Freedom of expression...for me and my friends
Recently (and we will not name names), I posted an article link onto my Collabowrite "Blog and Internet News." As the story was related to blogs and activism, I thought it might be of interest to some of my non-profit clients and posted a summary and link (not the entire story of course). Yesterday, I received an email from the creator of the original story asking me what I was doing with his work on my commercial, for-profit site. I, being ever polite (ask my mother) and increasingly cowardly as I get older, wrote a nice email back declaring that I was not aware that a Creative Commons license prohibited commercial entities from linking to or otherwise referencing other people's work. The original work's creator immediately replied that I could use the work since I was apparently not part of the Internet greed machine (not the exact words used).
Now maybe something has changed recently, but as far as I know (and not that this matters, but I did take a course on intellectual property in law school), linking and/or referencing, without reprinting entire original works, constitutes "fair use." And I am entitled to fair use, whether operating as a leftist news junkie or internet culture profiteer, in the instance of linking with a two sentence summary (see bitlaw for a good definition of fair use). Furthermore, a Creative Commons copyright is meant to be less restrictive for users of content, not more so (in fact, additional restrictions are not legally enforceable in this country). The whole idea of open content is that big media and big music are bending and warping copyright to their advantage, perhaps in a way not encompassed in the Constitution's spirit, and less restrictive licenses can protect content creators while allowing the rest of us a tad more leeway in using content.
Not that anyone reads my Collabowrite newslog, but the creator of the article should be greatful for links to his work - who cares whether the source of his growing audience is The Nation or IBM, as long as people read it, think about it, and heaven forbid, even discuss it? This is the dream of every author - to be loved! I entirely sympathize with growing concerns that Big Brother is seeping into and even occasionaly choking the juggernaut of populist expression that is the world wide web. But unless this country adopts an alternative economic form, we are all of us stuck with having to make money in order to survive. Therefore, even my most pinko revolutionary friends are for-profit to a certain extent. Weblogs are a great way to communicate and they should not only function as a method for teenage girls to discuss their endless succession of boyfriends and hair treatment solutions or unemployed programmers to gossip about their latest run-in with Dave Winer. Weblogs (and Newslogs) should serve all kinds of purposes, even those that might lead to some of us becoming more financially stable and perhaps having a kid, which as we know is really damn hard in this city!
So come on, nameless creator of said original content, get a clue!
Now maybe something has changed recently, but as far as I know (and not that this matters, but I did take a course on intellectual property in law school), linking and/or referencing, without reprinting entire original works, constitutes "fair use." And I am entitled to fair use, whether operating as a leftist news junkie or internet culture profiteer, in the instance of linking with a two sentence summary (see bitlaw for a good definition of fair use). Furthermore, a Creative Commons copyright is meant to be less restrictive for users of content, not more so (in fact, additional restrictions are not legally enforceable in this country). The whole idea of open content is that big media and big music are bending and warping copyright to their advantage, perhaps in a way not encompassed in the Constitution's spirit, and less restrictive licenses can protect content creators while allowing the rest of us a tad more leeway in using content.
Not that anyone reads my Collabowrite newslog, but the creator of the article should be greatful for links to his work - who cares whether the source of his growing audience is The Nation or IBM, as long as people read it, think about it, and heaven forbid, even discuss it? This is the dream of every author - to be loved! I entirely sympathize with growing concerns that Big Brother is seeping into and even occasionaly choking the juggernaut of populist expression that is the world wide web. But unless this country adopts an alternative economic form, we are all of us stuck with having to make money in order to survive. Therefore, even my most pinko revolutionary friends are for-profit to a certain extent. Weblogs are a great way to communicate and they should not only function as a method for teenage girls to discuss their endless succession of boyfriends and hair treatment solutions or unemployed programmers to gossip about their latest run-in with Dave Winer. Weblogs (and Newslogs) should serve all kinds of purposes, even those that might lead to some of us becoming more financially stable and perhaps having a kid, which as we know is really damn hard in this city!
So come on, nameless creator of said original content, get a clue!
