Many writers, whether
published or just starting out, are very nervous that someone else will steal
their work, whether that be another writer using their ideas in their own
stories, or someone making pirated copies of their books. When I put out a
collection of my writing, I specifically gave permission for anyone at all to
copy my ideas, or even to cut and paste whole stories. I also contacted the
Pirate Party, a worldwide network that wants to lessen copyright, and told them
that I was giving anyone permission to put my ebook on file-sharing sites. In
this post I hope to show why I went against common wisdom.
Creative Commons
I used a free service called Creative Commons. Creative Commons
is useful for people who want to give the general public permission to use
their work, but with restrictions. In my case I didn't mind people using my
work for non-profit purposes, such as posting on a blog, but I didn't want to
allow anyone to make money off it. Similarly I wanted anyone who used it to
give me credit. I could have just listed these things myself. However I'm not a
lawyer, and perhaps I would have worded it wrong so that someone could twist
what I said to do more than I meant. Also I could have been unclear about what
I was allowing and what I wasn't allowing. Sure, someone could email me and
ask, but the whole purpose of having a written statement is so that people
don't have to ask.
Creative Commons has a series
of different licenses, which give permission to do different things. They're
all legally 'tight', and they're all summarized in plain language. So all you
have to do is go to their site and answer a series of questions, to get to the
license that does what you want. In my case I used the Attribution Non-Commercial
License.
Why?
That's what I did. But why?
Common sense would suggest that I'm giving something away for free that I could
be selling. However I believe that, in the long run, I'll be better off. The
main reason is that I've seen how many people are, like me, trying to get their
writing out there. Go to Smashwords and have a look at the latest ebooks. Then
refresh the page ten minutes later, and you'll probably see a whole new lot.
The problem that new writers face isn't that people want to steal your work;
it's getting anyone to show an interest in your work at all. If someone passes
on a pirated copy of my work, it might get to someone who's prepared to buy it
- and that someone would probably have never heard of me otherwise. Even if
they don't want to pay for what they read, I might come out with something else
in the future, and perhaps paying 99c for it will be easier than hunting it
down on a file-sharing site.
Science fiction writer Andrew
Burt tells the story of someone who disliked his book, and to get back at him
decided to put a copy on a file-sharing site. The effect was that he got a
small 'spike' in sales immediately afterwards.
I also have some less selfish
motives. Many people would assume that the purpose of copyright is to protect
authors and creators. Leaving aside the fact that someone else often ends up
with the rights (how many Disney shareholders created any of the Disney
characters? How many shareholders in Microsoft have ever written a line of
code?), that doesn't seem to have been the intention in the past. The US
Constitution says that Congress has the power "to promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note
that protecting 'intellectual property' isn't mentioned. The authors of the
Constitution seemed to see the point as getting ideas out there where people
can use them: almost the exact opposite of keeping them 'safe' and 'protected'.
The original idea of
copyright seems to have been a sort of deal: you have an idea, and we want you
to get it out into the world where it will do some good. To encourage you to do
that, we'll give you a monopoly on its use for a limited time. After that,
anybody can use it (it will enter the 'public domain').
A lot of people don't know
that copyright used to give a lot less protection than it does now, especially
in the United States US US
This is great for the owners
of 'intellectual property'. But it's hard to see how this "promotes the
Progress of Science and useful Arts," or how forever is a "limited
time." In a sense it's a theft from the public. Anyone who publishes work
has accepted the deal that the law offers, of a limited monopoly in return for
making their idea known. Congress has been giving them more and more extensions
on that monopoly, but doesn't require them to do anything to earn it.
It probably doesn't matter
that much that Disney still owns Mickey Mouse, or that Lord of the Rings is still under copyright. But remember that these
laws don't just apply to the arts. Similar laws apply to science as well. So a
life-saving invention could be going unused, because its owner wants too much
money for it, or because it's tied up in court while two companies fight about
who owns it.
Conclusion
I'm far from an expert on
either the law or the publishing industry. However I hope that I've given you,
especially those of you who might be thinking about publishing some writing, a
different take on the whole issue of whether authors should worry about their
ideas being stolen. At least I hope I've shown you that there's a different way
of thinking about it, and that that way doesn't require you to just give up on
making money; in fact that it might be more profitable as well as better for
society.
---
bio: James Hutchings lives in
Melbourne , Australia
---
This article is licensed
under a Creative
Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.
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