As of today, 11th August, 2018, I hereby release and relinquish all copyright over the posts and content of this blog. This material is now part of the public domain.
You don’t need to email me for permission to use or reproduce this material. You are free to use it as you wish.
Attribution would be appreciated but is not required.
I have wanted to do this for a long time – and for many reasons that I’ll come to in a minute – but I wanted to give a nod to the following people and organisations because they inspired me to take this step:
- Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.net – You can read his ‘Uncopyright‘ page here.
- Richard Stallman
- Cory Doctorow
- The Free Software Foundation
- Copyleft.org
- Creative Commons.org
- The Open Source Community
Now for the reasons… and there are so many, but here are my main ones.
Copyright needn’t be the default. We are free to create and follow other options.
Ideas are meant to be free. They are not meant to be jealously guarded. If they can help and serve humanity, then they must be put to such use and we must help and promote this by voluntarily releasing copyright.
Nobody owns an idea. I don’t honestly believe that anyone can truly claim ownership of an idea anyway. This is because we constantly receive information and input from others, and from the unseen and this is really where most of our ideas come from.
As one of my favourite writers, Steven Pressfield said,
“Artists are modest. They know they’re not doing the work; they’re just taking dictation.”
What flashes of insight or inspiration we may lay claim to don’t originate from within us, but are transmitted to us, from their place of origin. We are merely the conduits. Who are we then to claim ownership over them? And is it fair or right to deny others the benefit of any such idea?
Collaboration. As the old paradigm of competition takes its dying breath and the world built around this archaic idea crumbles around us, we must look to the new paradigm for guidance and the way forward. The way forward, as I see it, is through collaboration.
We can reject the narrow and petty interests of profit, egotism, and nationalism; embrace our common bond as humans, and work together to make our lives and our world better in every way.
We can’t do this if copyright is allowed to hold us back. And, as the motto of the Creative Commons puts it,
“When we share, everyone wins.”