Blog Licencing
Until quite recently I syndicated quite a lot of news feeds on this website.
Many of those were blogs of free software supporters, who, like me believe strongly in the existence of copyright and promote free software, using either the GPL, BSD, Apache etc. licences.
However, I was dismayed to find that many of them however displayed very little in the way of Copyright Information.
I was horrified when I found that some of those that *did* have Copyright information, had applied it in an unnecessarily restrictive way over their blogs which meant I could not use it for anything.
I'm unclear why some feel these restrictive copyright terms are are necessary.
What, may I ask, is wrong with attribution given, non-commercial (or commercial) copying of their posts?
Are they scared that people will that people will misrepresent their views?
I believe this is a in some circumstances can be justified, in the case of opinionated blogging, I would certainly say so - I use the verbatim copying licence which allows people to copy my posts WITHOUT changing them.
Even the *least* permissive licence from Creative Commons is better than:
© Joe Blogs 2008 All Rights Reserved.
Stop inhibiting Creativity and Innovation.
Promote Freedom.
Let people copy your blogs.
Freedom Promoting:
Innovation in Software - Paul Robinson
Paul has licenced his content under the following licence:All content is Copyright © 2006-2007 Vagueware Ltd and is released under a non-commercial, attribution required, commercial commons license....which doesn't make sense to me. However I get the gist that attribution is required in non-commercial when copying content in non-commercial circumstances.
Different Colours - Dave Page
Some what hidden on his profile page Dave states:
Except where otherwise noted, all my original content in public entries on my LiveJournal are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.
It would be easier to find if this was at the bottom of each page and I that suspect if Livejournal was flexible in that way, Dave would have it there. However the meaning is the same either way.
Exploring Freedom - Matt Lee
Chief Webmaster of the GNU Project, Matt has a nice description of his blog:
Exploring Freedom is an online journal detailing one man's exploration of free software and free culture. It's written by Matt Lee from Manchester, UK and published by CNUK.
But there is no Copyright notice to be found...
Edit:
Matt has fixed his blog:
Anything I post here is my personal opinion, and not that of my employer.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
If you want, you can also use this blog under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 England and Wales.
JonathanD - Jonathan Davis
As someone who has a tag for "OSS Advocacy" and is a Ubuntu advocate, I was surprised that Jonathan hadn't bothered to add a copyright notice his blog.Update - Jonathan has added this text to his blog:
Except where specifically stated, all content on this site is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. I would also like to state that all content on this site is my own opinion and does not reflect the views of my employer.
Port7 - Mark Johnson
Mark leaves loads of information about who he is and where he lives but no indications of what licence his blog is under.Update:Mark has add this text to his blog:
Blog under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License
:)
Tongue Out to Freedom:
Rogue Tory - Paul Waring
Paul has this copyright notice on his blog:
Original entries are copyright © 2002 - 2008 Paul Waring. Comments are the copyright of their respective authors. When I asked for clarification of exactly what this meant and what terms the content was under, he replied:
14:55 < pwaring> tdobson: basically, you can't use it without my permission until 70 years after I've diedConsidering he recently embedded a xkcd cartoon, which is, of course, licenced fairly, in one of his posts, I find this a bit ironic whilst extremly sad.
IconPlex - Paul Robinson
Despite Vagueware having a relatively healthy licence, IconPlex, unfortunately, does not suffer the same privileges.Copyright © 2006 iconoplexcopyrighteous - Benjamin Mako Hill
As someone who claims and evidently *does* support Free Culture, I'm shocked that the only thing I could find relating to copyright here was:
Content © 2007 Benjamin Mako Hill
Powered by PyBlosxom
Header © 2005 babasteve
Hacker Visions - James Vasile
James states:Copyright © 2008 James VasileWhich given he works for the SFLC leaves me with mixed feelings.
In addition he allows you to submit comments under these conditions...
By accessing this site, you agree to the following terms:
You grant me (James Vasile) a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to reprint any content you contribute to this site, in verbatim or modified form, and in any medium.
This website inevitably collects some data about users, both in server logs and in the content you contribute. I won’t share your data with spammers.
From time to time, I might add new terms here.
...which in my opinion, given the licence of his content, is a bit harsh.
What's this "Freedom" Thing?
Bleah - Simon Ward
Simon is the opposing Candidate for Chairman of Manchester Free Software Group.He doesn't list any terms regarding the copyright status of the blog, however on questioning he stated:
15:01 < sward> At some point I give rights to distribute some or all of my site, until then, I haven't decided how I want to play it.
15:01 < sward> *may give
Hopefully he'll choose to release it all under a permissive licence soon
Enrico Zini's Blog
Unfortunately, Enrico has no information on what copyright status his content is.Perhaps he will clarify this soon.
Planet Germany - Cathy Dobson
When I visited, my aunts blog, I was not totally surprised not be able to find a copyright notice, however it's unlikely that the Creative Commons Share-Alike, Non commercial, No Modifications licence would cause her problems here.- tdobson's blog
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Comments
Free Culture and someone's
Free Culture and someone's opinions are different things though. People might not want their words to be remixed, or taken out of context, but would be happy for someone to do something with their photographs, for example.
mattl
cheey
Even though I changed my blog, I think you are a cheeky bastard for asking
Correlations
It's interesting that some of the people who seem to advocate Free Culture have the most restrictively licenced blogs.
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