Letter to ask publishers to use copyleft.

Here are two letters that may be of interest covering copy left and free distribution of texts. I have since found they contain a few errors, which I hope to correct on standard letter and in footnotes to copies here sometime. Also I would not use the Isaac Newton quote because of nasty irony in it, which has since been point out to me. Some other discussion of free reuse can be found on aktivix wiki and indymedia wiki

Dear Publisher,

I recommend for you to adopt copyleft for your entire publications especially where they are collaborative works, to allow free creative flow.

'If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.'

—Sir Isaac Newton

My guess is that by adopting copyleft and giving your audience more freedom you would not cut the supply of contributions, which might be a fear. You could ask your contributors to see what they think. But also you would send a powerful message about supporting the public commons.

The contributors could still license their work to others under a more restrictive license as they would still retain individual copyright ( that is how copy left works it uses legal power of copyright to allow and maintain freedoms, to share and modify ) .

if you can please check out :

Flash presentation to explain how copyleft works (click me)

I myself do not want to enforce restrictive copyright and licenses on projects I work on. I wish people to be able to freely take stuff from a website or a book for that matter and use however they want, in fact nothing else is really practical, and if I use a license it is to make sure they do not restrict others freedoms to do the same with the derivative work.

Also one thing I advise people to do if they want credit for images is add it to image itself as text in corner maybe a url to website which can contain credit / caption / copyright / license. As if copied it is often left intact.

A good example of it's use on collaborative content is the Wikipedia which is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it is free and will remain so forever. See wikipedia:Copyrights for the details and open content and free content for background.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Could you please consider moving to using a free license such as one of the Creative Commons licenses or the GNU Free Documentation License or both with double licensing

thanks,

Space Bunny

Dear Schnews,

This is a friendly request for you to adopt copyleft for you entire publication especially as you carried an article on copyleft p267 ( abet with several errors, ask if you want to know) which I was very pleased to see.

For and example of why this would be useful, If I wanted to put a copy of Schnew of the World on a cdrom that is distributed for free or close to cost, would you be prepared to contact all the artists ( of photos or cartoons ) who contributed to seek permission. If one of them objected then I could not just use a PDF as I would need original file and be able to deal with it to edit out those that refuse and did not reply, to create a new one. Having said that I may wish to edit it anyway to correct errors, add updates.

My guess is that by adopting copyleft and giving your audience more freedom you would not cut the supply of work to you, which might be a fear You could ask your contributors to see what they think. But also you would send a powerful message about supporting the public commons.

The contributors could still license their work to others under a more restrictive license as they would still retain individual copyright ( that is how copy left works; it uses legal power of copyright to allow and maintain freedoms, to share and modify ie against the grain of what we dislike about copyright) .

if you can please check out :

Flash presentation to explain how copyleft works

I myself do not want to enforce restrictive copyright and licenses on projects I work on. I wish people to be able to freely take stuff from a website or a book for that matter and use however they want, in fact nothing else is really practical in this scene, and if I use a license it is to make sure they do not restrict others freedoms to do the same with the derivative work.

Vague psuedo agreement has caused me problems before with web publishing, adding a week of work in removing material from spunk archive of those who wish to assert authorship rights before use on pressed cdrom that Zion Train paid for out of there China records publicity budget.
In end wrong copy was used and all stuff went on, but who was going to enforce there copy right against China records.
This may have been also be ruled out as 'commercial' under vague free to use non commercially blurbs '@nti-copyright for non profit purposes only'.

What does @nti copyright mean? Is it like saying 'anti-wages', until you define it then it means nothing. It can not mean full public domain if you put non profit restriction. Also non-profit could mean Welcome Trust, Trinity College, Scottish Enterprise or the Government. They could then use the works and modify and not return these modifications to the public commons under your blurb. But under full copyleft they would be obliged to return any derivative works to public commons.

There is a license that does restrict use without contact for commercial purposes.

http://opencontent.org/openpub/

Also one thing I advise people to do if they want credit for images is add it to image itself as text in corner maybe a url to website which can contain credit / caption / copyright / license. As if copied it is often left intact.

A good example of it's use on collaborative content is the Wikipedia which is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it is free and will remain so forever. See wikipedia:Copyrights for the details and open content and free content for background.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

The FSF will will take on big breach if people try to republish without being gnued ( eg some publisher who does not gnu whole book which they put photos in that are freely usable under gnu), or get separate licenses from original copyright holder, as author are automatically copy right holder of what they produce which they retain after licensing unless they sell copy instead.
But small individual have no power to enforce their copyright. But GnuPL increases what is in the commons.

Would it not be funny if The Times in error used a photo or text from you, and found themselves in court to oblige them to give people same freedoms with the derivative work. That is why Microsoft have call GnuPL a cancer.

So could you please consider moving to using a free license such as one of the Creative Commons licenses or the GNU Free Documentation License

If you need help implementing these licenses please get in touch. It basically means putting some blurb at front and in an appendix in publication. And getting permission which can be verbal to use material under this license. I think it is worth doing this copyleft properly so everyone sure of where they stand contributors and readers.

thanks,

Space Bunny

sent originally on Sun, 09 Feb 2003

the response was:

Hi there
We are 'anti-copyright' except where noted in the book. Many of our photographers are particularly sensitive about maintaining copyright - giving us their stuff for free is as far as their generosity goes.
please tell me briefly how copyleft would be different... I am just too busy to read all of this email.
Cheers
John

I then rang John and persuaded him of value of copyleft but he said did not want to devote space to license, and not much time to consider options himself but I should email front blurb which I did:

start of blurb:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license can be found on the internet at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
A copy may be obtained by post from us or
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

In addition:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 License
or any later version published by the Creative Commons.
A copy of the license can be found on the internet via:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/nc-sa/1.0/
A copy may be obtained by post from us or
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305-8610
United States

end of blurb.

----

Also I advised to check contributors are happy with this. But I guess most would have been as they had previously had anti-copyright statement.

The creative commons license with non commmmercial option is closest to what they have now. I myself would have just done plain share alike which gives more freedom, which is case with GNU FDL

I think best to do both as double licensing so I can copy bit of schnews in wikipedia.org no problem under GNU. But also someone can add something to a project they are doing under CC license which is easyier to understand as CC all explaination and better promotion.