#share-alike

[image-cabinet]

Medieval Manuscript copied in 1500, depicting a bishop selling privileges to the clergy. The floral border includes the abbot's episcopal Arms.

CC-BY-SA, Sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

[image-cabinet]

Brightly colored houses from Cape Town, South Africa (2024).

CC-BY-SA, Own-Work, Sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

[k-star-holic]

"Jang Youngran's Tears" ⁇ In the Middle of the Day, I'll Be Good For Life...Do My Best for My Dead Father" (AM Plaza)

[jhavelikes]

"The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing: may you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give."

Size isn't everything for the modest creator of SQLite | Technology | The Guardian | http://ift.tt/1PpEFY0 | February 07, 2016 at 07:16PM

[hlilje]

Copyleft vs Copyfree

Or rather, Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) vs Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). I've been getting more into actual licenses and their meaning lately, and a while ago I decided I would like to publish my own work under one of the several Creative Commons licenses. This seemed as a logical step for me, as I have traditionally always opposed strict copyright and things working against freedom in general. However, after reading Notch's blogpost about patents (and partly copyright) and reflecting a bit myself, I am currently torn over which one of these two licenses I should choose, CC BY or CC BY-SA.

At first the Share-Alike license seemed as the obvious choice, after all, if someone were to make use of my material they should be willing to give other people the same opportunity with their work, right? Well, after reflecting over the matter at hand, I don't feel as this problem is as easily adressed and solved.

Let's ignore CC for a moment, on a personal level I would like to give everyone the opportunity to use, remix and even gain profit from my work, for free. All I want in return is for people to recognize me as the original author of the work they made use of. So far, this is exactly what CC BY is about. And if someone were to use my work in their own, it's only fair that they also are willing to publish their work under the same or a similar license (CC BY-SA). But is this really that fair, I can't help but to ask myself?

I'm generally feeling strongly about freedom in art, works, speech, life?, etc. By forcing people to use the same license as me, they can't refuse other that opportunity by having a strict copyright themselves. I guess I find this legit if, say, a large evil company tried to use one of my songs in their work for whatever reason, and then blatantly refused anyone else to for instance remix that new work. But what if, for instance, an indie game developer wanted to use one of my songs in the same fashion, should they be forced to make their whole game BY-SA?

This is were I have started to look at copyright a bit more maturely, I guess. I understand that commercial products might have to have some degree of copyright control over their work, and if they were forced to make it all BY-SA, then they probably wouldn't even consider using it in the first place. So perhaps just plainly BY would be better here, then I would give people full right to use my work, without having to be forced into using a particular license themselves.

Let's also compare CC BY-SA with the GNU General Public License (GPL). As I understand, GPL is basically the same thing with some modifications more appropriate for software. The important factor here is that it basically is Share-Alike as well. Do I really want to take on the role as one of those fanatic GPL promoters who claim that everything must be totally free, and hope to achieve that by forcing everyone to make their code equally free, viral style?

Right now I'm feeling that I generally wish copyright didn't exist in the way it currently does, but I'm also of the oppinion that people should be free to choose what license they want to use for themselves, even if they were to incorporate my work into their own. At the very least for practical/legal reasons. But if I don't actively take stance against copyright by going full on BY-SA, then were do I actually stand in the matter? Maybe copyright is to some extent necessary for commercial reasons. I'm hoovering my mouse cursor over the SA-button over at SoundClouds control panel.

Is enforced freedom more libre than optional freedom? For now, my answer would have to be no.