I recently received an email inquiring about Creative Commons and Wiki. Here is my take...
CC and wiki - the short of it is..."We the Media"
Wiki - is an online open-ended database. Any user, any browser - can become an editor. The simplest way to share information and evolve web usage. Two extreme contrasts are wikipedia.org and urbandictionary.com. Both allow for user-defined content, one will kill the encyclopedia; the other will kill brain cells.
CC is in short, sharing information. Original copyright laws limit the building upon of content, the Creative Commons organization formed to try to return to what they think our founding fathers intended to do with Copyright.
An interesting guy to look at is Cory Doctorow. His latest work "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" was published in CC and actually launched in several electronic formats including the iPod and PSP. Cory believes that the more he gives away the more he will earn, and actually has created a model that backs up his theory, apparently. He is using a version of the CC called iCommons, which has been adopted by something like 21 countries since late 2004. What this means is that you can download the book in the states, but you can actually print that thing for profit in other countries. This is essentially a utopian belief that by giving your work away to underprivileged countries for their gain will bring them up to the lifestyle we enjoy here in North America, and therefore we all win. Good book if you like science fiction, I read it on my PSP- for free!
Speech he gave about Creative Commons - http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
Then of course, there is copyleft, the idea is that every person who receives a version of the software, music, document, or art can adapt it change it, and re-purpose the item from it's original version. And then they must ensure that they copyleft the work so that the circle can be repeated. Very ideological in it's very nature.
As if one of my diatribes wasn't long enough...now there are two to wade through.
Sorry about the double entry. It was not by design, but it will help in case there were any questions the first time through! ha
Posted by: Shadow | 10/25/2005 at 06:45 PM
Agree that life, in general, doesn't have any guarantee to 'end well'...but in the context of the narrative- for the relative 'unknown author' who now has the chance to publish and reach above obscurity (even if it does only reach web media) it's going to at least have the potential to 'end well.'
I concur that plagiarizing another's work is getting easier. The advent of the computer facilitated the job immensely. But the computer also facilitated the free flow of ideas and made communication over long distances feasible. Good or bad, it happened.
Some of those ideas that are communicated rapidly are bad ones...hijackers' coordinating, terrorists' planning, etc. Likewise, good has its chance to profit also. Nature of the medium...
Regarding plagiarism: it's usually pretty hard for the average writer, under a time crunch, to incorporate well worded ideas as his own and get away with it. This, I know from experience...both as the student and teacher. Ha.
As for the 'youth' part...I appreciate it. Turns out, it's been a while since I've been accused in that category.
Posted by: Shadow | 10/23/2005 at 05:46 PM
Agree that life, in general, doesn't have any guarantee to 'end well'...but in the context of the narrative- for the relative 'unknown author' who now has the chance to publish and reach above obscurity (even if it does only reach web media) it's going to at least have the potential to 'end well.'
I concur that plagiarizing another's work is getting easier. The advent of the computer facilitated the job immensely. But the computer also facilitated the free flow of ideas and made communication over long distances feasible. Good or bad, it happened.
Some of those ideas that are communicated rapidly are bad ones...hijackers' coordinating, terrorists' planning, etc. Likewise, good has its chance to profit also. Nature of the medium...
Regarding plagiarism: it's usually pretty hard for the average writer, under a time crunch, to incorporate well worded ideas as his own and get away with it. This, I know from experience...both as the student and teacher. Ha.
As for the 'youth' part...I appreciate it. Turns out, it's been a while since I've been accused in that category.
Posted by: Shadow | 10/23/2005 at 05:45 PM
Thus a cynic Shadow. Awe, the optimism of youth, so trusting in your fellow man to do the right thing.
No one ever profitted his soul by living on another's handout or dining on the orts of others, certainly not by believing that there is honor in calling another's ideas his own.
The new technology is making it so much easier to do the devil's work. Everyone has their price and can justify, ever so slightly in the beginning, crossing that line.
Besides, who says all is going to end well?
Posted by: Sin Nick | 10/22/2005 at 08:05 PM
Well...I contend things aren't as dire you predict Mr. Sin Nick. Those interested in publishing pieces for profit will most likely continue to copyright via legal and regular means. Meaning: they will continue to get paid.
Others will 'publish' via extraordinary means and potentially gain a name for themselves. So, all's well that ends well.
By the way...alternate definition of cynic:
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sidney J. Harris
Posted by: Shadow | 10/22/2005 at 07:10 PM
So it's not bad enough that we are having our hard earned money, land,--you name it taken from us and redistributed....now we have to have a brain drain too? Even our ideas and original thoughts are up for grabs by anyone and everyone!?! Where does it all end? It is going to be an incentive for the laziest, the least creative, ultimately the most cunning in society to feed off of those who do all the grunt work, only to have their genius syphoned off. Someone is going to get very rich off the intellect and creativity of others, I'm not so sure people are as altruistic as one might think.
Posted by: Sin Nick | 10/20/2005 at 10:06 AM
This is very interesting in that the whole thing is a gihugic paradigm shift on how we view an author's works...in the big scheme a book/article/etc really just passes ideas into the brains of readers allowing the reader's actions to be his alone.
This seems to beckon to the old quote..."there is no limit to the good you can do, if you don't care who gets the credit."
I like it.
Posted by: Shadow | 10/19/2005 at 11:18 AM
Thanks Justin, I appreciate the vote of confidence. Feel like I'm jumping in way over my head on this one...could be rather overwhelming - if you are not on the inside.
Posted by: a.brain | 10/15/2005 at 10:45 PM
Dude, well done. You hit the premise on the head, without getting to mired down in details. Here is another image of copyleft that I found on oreilly http://www.oreillynet.com/users/files/67715/copyleft-wings.jpg
Posted by: Justine Gates | 10/15/2005 at 03:10 PM