Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Licenses

I would like to make something very clear to certain people. Unless otherwise specified, the photos and content on this site are my work. I started this blog to share recipes with friends, and that is still my goal. But I can't tell you how disparaging it is to have my friends send me links from other pages that have posted copies of my work without giving me credit. While nobody seems to have personally taken credit for these images (at least not yet), none of them seem to be interested in telling the truth when others mistakenly give them credit. And because more people are interested in taking things at face value than properly researching the origins, the abusers get away with it.

United States copyright law currently states that as soon as somebody produces a work, they own the copyright, whether or not they register it. That means that I own the copyright on all of the articles and photos on my site, unless otherwise specified. But if I want to maintain that copyright, I need to enforce it. There's not a whole lot I can do here. It's not possible to track down every single misuse of my work. But I need to do something.

I don't mind if you make my recipes; that's why I post them. I think it's great when somebody looks at my instructions and decides to try and do what I did. I especially love it when they post what they did and link back to my original instructions. I don't even mind if they put a copy of my photos on their site, along with the link back to me. But I do want them to link back. All I want is a little credit where credit's due.

I am applying a license to the work on my site. This license applies retroactively to everything I have posted so far, and it applies to everything that I post in the future, unless otherwise specified. Because I want to encourage other people to use my content, I have decided to use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license. Posting copies of my work without giving me credit is a violation of this license.

I have spent countless hours producing the content on this site. Some of the projects that I have posted about and included pictures of have been the result of many hours and often days worth of work. At this time I do not make a living off of my site. There are adverts sprinkled throughout the site, but the revenue so far has been tiny. What I get out of it is a sense that I'm doing something that some people enjoy, and for the moment that's good enough for me. Again, all I really want beyond that is a little credit. Is that too much to ask?

4 comments:

  1. Joseph,

    At SCaLE last month, I went to a presentation on the legal requirements for copyright. It was pretty cool.

    The main thing he mentioned was that to register it is the way to make sure its enforceable. It costs $40 and is available to anyone who wants to register their copyright. I know this means that you might have to copyright a lot of things, but its just a thought.

    Cheers,

    Clint

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  2. Found another picture of a cake or something on Myspace did you?

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  3. Hey Joseph, remember me, I'm Will, I took your RH class in NJ. I like to drop by from time to time to check out what's going on. This post really got me thinking. I know how much it can be disheartening to see your work go unaccounted for. I'm a musician, so I go through it too. I think now with the way the internet is, you just can't change it really. I mean, it is what it is. People will take whatever they can and probably won't even at least thank you for it. To some degree, it's a battle not worth fighting cause you'll probably just loose anyway. I know I'm constantly trying to figure out a way around it, kinda like the "can't beat them, join them" train of thought. It sucks, but still it is what it is and people are people. But I do hear you brother. It can be a bit of a slap in the face but on the other hand, I'd be a bit proud to see my work out in the crowd. Look at it this way, it just means you do work worth spreading.

    Cheers,
    Will

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  4. Just a slight correction about enforcing copyrights. You're probably thinking of trademarks which have to be maintained in order for them to stay enforceable. Copyrights on the other hand remain just as valid whether you pursue all violations or none.

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