Uncopyright
“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” - Mark Twain
This site and its sub-domains are uncopyrighted. I release all claims on copyright and put all the content (photos, articles, logos, etc.) of this website into the public domain.
No permission is needed to copy, distribute, or modify the content of this site.
If you use any of my work I would greatly appreciate credit or acknowledgement, and even a link back to my original work, but you are absolutely under no obligation to do so.
Why Uncopyright?
The reasons are many, but mostly I feel that copyright laws are the antithesis of freedom. Contrary to popular belief, copyright “infringement” is not stealing. Stealing is a violation of someone’s freedom by taking something from them against their will. As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently puts it:
“He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine — as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. ”
When you read my work on this site, I am giving you my ideas. Even if I copyright my blog and try to prevent you, through force-of-law (which is what copyright is), from redistributing these ideas, I can’t take them back from you. Even if I prosecute you and win, I can’t take my ideas back from you. Equally as true, you haven’t taken the ideas — or anything else — from me (I still have them). That is actually the beauty of the idea. This is how ideas spread so rapidly and allow our society to advance and improve so quickly. Copyright laws go against this natural truth.
Why Copyright?
You might now be wondering why copyright even exists. The Copyright Clause in the United States Constitution allows government:
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.
Copyright (in the U.S at least) was designed to promote science and useful arts. It was not intended to protect or create profits for creators (though this was recognized as a by-product of giving authors and inventors exclusize rights for limited times). Today’s copyright laws and their enforcement have completely lost sight of the original intent. It is hard to argue that today’s copyright only secures exclusive rights for “limited times” — creators can have their works protected for up to 120 years!
It is widely accepted today that a creator of a work has a right to a “fair” profit from that work. This is absolutely correct. Where the catch comes in, is by what means can creators achieve these profits? Should they have the right to restrict the freedoms of others just to secure their own profits? That is the trade-off we make with copyright.
But if we did not have copyright, would creators all of a sudden stop creating?
I believe the answer to this is emphatically no. Just look at youtube, the blogosphere, flickr, and thousands of other websites and communities where people willingly share their hard work online for free. Millions of breathtaking photos can be seen, downloaded, modified, and re-distributed from flickr. Thousands of amazing quality videos are pushed to youtube everyday and can be watched free of charge. If copyright goes away, will Stephen King stop writing books? More importantly, will people stop buying them? The obvious question to both of these answers is also no.
Owning Culture
Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture, has said:
“There has never been a time in history when more of our ‘culture’ was as ‘owned’ as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now.”
If we continue down the current path of extending copyright protections essentially indefinitely (they have been extended numerous times, never shortened), we may find ourselves in a society where culture is owned by the few, and has to be paid for by the many. This is not a society I look forward to.
Because of these reasons, and many others, I have chosen to uncopyright my works. I feel that in a truly free society uncopryight would be the only option available anyway. I embrace the free exchange of ideas, and accept that others can take, expand upon, and even abuse my ideas. That is one of the natural costs that comes along with sharing your ideas with others, and I would never want to hinder that.
Further Reading
For more information on why I dislike copyright, and why I chose to uncopyright my work, check out some of the links below:
- Free Culture
- Feel Free to Steal My Content
- Question Copyright
- Misinterpreting Copyright
- The Surprising History of Copyright and the Promise of a Post-Copyright World
- Abandoning Copyright
- How Things Would Work in a Copyright Free Universe
- Molnari Institute Anti-Copyright Resources
- Uncopyright and the Minimalist Mindset