Moving Beyond Copyright (Blog)

[NewSimon]

Originally Posted by Bodhi

Dreams in this world require cash. If you have big dreams for this world you need lots of cash.

Yes, Mother Teresa drove a yellow Lamborghini Countach for many years to get between convents (it's never mentioned). And Martin Luther King invented bling (he would have had some cool 24 inch rims on his ride too, if had been born 40 years later).

And yes, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Help me, overcome it!

[globalhealingexchange]

Its funny how i found this blog today as i was looking for new writers for my website.

Please check out Welcome to Global Healing Exchange I found you via The finer minds blog. We have permission to use there articles.

Please let me know if you will allow us to use yours.

What we have been doing is submitting the artlices with a link back to the owners website. We are not interested in using the articles for our own personal gain or saying we wrote it. We are committed to teaching people to heal themselves and learn about what is really out there. In order to do that we need different peoples perspectives to open people's minds.

Keep up the great work.


Thanks
Global Healing Exchange

[Cado]

Originally Posted by beautyscientist

I am not really into the whole self help/personal development scene apart from reading Steve's stuff, so I am afraid I have never heard of Bob Proctor before this thread. (I think we are all agreed Steve isn't like most of the rest of them anyway.)

I don't know if Bob has a really worthwhile body of work and this is simply one minor glitch.

But I will say, I don't think there is any way Steve could have handled the situation that shows himself in a better light.

How do you figure? The law is on his side. If anyone came out of it worse for the wear it would be Proctor and I'd say he deserves it if he's pawning off a product he didn't write himself. That's the worst kind of guru-the kind that preaches without practicing.

If anything I would think exposing him would would be a service to his would-be customers. There's plenty of shysters in the PD biz and the longer they get away with it the more of them there'll be.

[beautyscientist]

Originally Posted by Illustro Cado

How do you figure? The law is on his side. If anyone came out of it worse for the wear it would be Proctor and I'd say he deserves it if he's pawning off a product he didn't write himself. That's the worst kind of guru-the kind that preaches without practicing.

If anything I would think exposing him would would be a service to his would-be customers. There's plenty of shysters in the PD biz and the longer they get away with it the more of them there'll be.

Anyone can pick a fight. In the Tempest Prospero has the people who robbed him of his inheritance at his mercy. But he decides to deal with them with moderation. As Shakespeare puts it

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance

The Tempest would be a pretty rubbish play if it ended with the villains simply getting their comeuppance.

[Steffen Petri]

I just recently started my own personal development Website in german language. I'd really like to translate some of your articels Steve, so my fellow germans could enjoy your great material. I'd always link to the original Articel on the buttom of the page. I'd also be willing to share some of the revenue they create with you.

e: I also want to add what a great inspiration you've been for me and that I actually started the site because of your influence.
Since I did this I feel way more insprired my self and also very liberated.

[amites]

I suppose the question comes down to one of several options, the 2 most prevalent I see are:

build a tribe to manage further distribution or set it into the wild?

one would provide a limited amount of control that would large be based on community (likely founding members are among this forum and on facebook etc...) and as such would not require such a large degree of attention and could in theory be completely hands off on your part Steve

the other is likely to see more copies of your articles though would likely be used to create cool works such as human translations into blogs by article / snippet as well as some trashy type stuff as machine translation and markov spinning enter the picture

either way creating printed versions is intriguing - especially with things like Amazon print on demand...

curious to see how this idea unfolds

[MarkHarrison]

Originally Posted by Angela

You know, people often say, "Money is the root of all evil," even though the original quote is "The love of money is the root of all evil," a significant alteration of meaning -- one might say, people have treated the material as so much ****. And somehow, the original meaning has survived intact, too.

Actually, the original is slightly different. It wasn't in English, for a start :-)

The translation "The love of money is the root of all evil" started in the King James Bible, translated in 1611. For the last 400 years, biblical scholars have been trying to sort out a subtlety that the King James scholars sort of missed.

If you an English Christian, your Church is probably using the NIV now, which says:

- "The love of money is the root of ALL KINDS OF EVIL"
--- both the American and UK versions of the NIV use this translation
--- the New King James Bible uses this version as well

If you are American, there is a good chance that you are on the New American Standard:

- "The love of money is the root of ALL SORTS OF EVIL."

So, what the thing actually says isn't that money is evil... not even that love of money is evil... but that love of money is the root of "all sorts of evil" (which is to say that there are other reasons for evil as well.)



Anyway, onto the question of copyright.

1: Copyleft isn't really relevant - It only applies to software, and is about the fact that if you distribute a version of the code, you have obligations to distribute the source code as well, and given modification rights.

2: Copyright is a funny thing - you either copyright something, or you don't. If you copyright it (which, actually in most European/North American Countries, you are assumed to have done, even if you DON'T include a copyright notice!), then you can choose what rights you keep. If you don't copyright something, then you lose ALL rights. So, be careful about using phrases that say things like "I'm giving away copyright", because you'll, from that moment on, not be able to stop people misrepresenting your work.

3: The Creative Commons team have put a lot of thought into the different "dimensions" along which you might want to release something:

- Do you require people who use it to say where they got it
- Do you allow people to modify it
- Do you allow people to make commercial gain out of it, or only allow them certain rights for "non-commercial" use

Any combination of these gives rise to a particular "version" of the CC licence - so you could, for instance, allow people to use / modify your work for their own use... but not for profit.

Just because you issue work under a particular CC licence doesn't stop you issuing it to other people under a DIFFERENT licence AS WELL... so you could allow anyone "non-commercial" stuff, but anyone who wants to print "The Best of Steve" and sell it on Amazon needs to agree terms with you... you might choose not to charge them anything, but might want to reserve an editor's pen to prevent them putting your work together with something you don't want to promote.

4: What I do...

.... my blog articles are available to anyone, provided they link back to my blog and note that they are using them with my permission.

.... my book is my copyright, you can buy it, lend it to a friend, sell it again, or re-cycle it as firelighters if you want.

... my ebook (same content as my book) has a more restricted set of rights, basically driven by Amazon, in that you can buy it, but not transfer it to someone else.

.... my audio CDs have split copyright - I have the (C) copyright, but Nightingale Conant have exclusive publishers rights (the so-called (P) rights.) If you buy it you can listen to it, then re-sell it if you want, and you can lend the CDs to your friends.... but what you can't do is make copies of it for other people.

[In the US, you also have this concept called "Fair Use", by which if you buy a CD, you can record it onto a tape for use in your car... which in 21st Century terms has come through as "you can rip it to your MP3 player." In the UK, doing that is an offence without permission of the copyright holder! I wanted to explicitly give my listeners that right, and I'm glad to say that Nightingale were 100% supportive.]


Personally, I would encourage you to make as much as possible available on a Creative Commons licence that required people to credit you, but allowed them to build on your work.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by MarkHarrison

Actually, the original is slightly different. It wasn't in English, for a start :-)

The translation "The love of money is the root of all evil" started in the King James Bible, translated in 1611. For the last 400 years, biblical scholars have been trying to sort out a subtlety that the King James scholars sort of missed.

If you an English Christian, your Church is probably using the NIV now, which says:

- "The love of money is the root of ALL KINDS OF EVIL"
--- both the American and UK versions of the NIV use this translation
--- the New King James Bible uses this version as well

If you are American, there is a good chance that you are on the New American Standard:

- "The love of money is the root of ALL SORTS OF EVIL."

So, what the thing actually says isn't that money is evil... not even that love of money is evil... but that love of money is the root of "all sorts of evil" (which is to say that there are other reasons for evil as well.)

Well, I acknowledge you for the most flamboyantly beside-the-point mismatch I've ever encountered on the forums!

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by NewSimon

And yes, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Help me, overcome it!

I beg to differ. Ever heard of puns?

[Angela]

Originally Posted by secrets0stolen

I beg to differ. Ever heard of puns?

A good pun is its own reword.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Angela

A good pun is its own reword.

Oh how I love you.

[Mudo]

When in doubt, let the fundamental principles guide you, wich i'm doing with my objective lens:

1. Love: recalling steve's purpose in life "to awaken the sleeping minds, help people grow and leave the world in peace" -> The perfection of this purpose would be your ideias accessible by every human being on the planet.

2. Truth: Lies have short legs(grandma) ->Even if some opportunist moocher mindset guru "steals" your ideas, the truth is that they are yours, or flowed through you. Even if they copy your full articles one by one, and even if they start making profit out of it, it won't last, it won't be sustainable, the mask will fall. The readers will start their conscious growth path aligning themselves with the truth, and eventually they'll find out the true author of the treasured ideas. It would be good even on the financial side. The dormant bears that would not toherwise visit your website will eventually generate more traffic for you thanks to the moochers. More traffic, more resources to keep going. Steve might actually beat Bill Gates on money :O, you would be the living proof that the system is a complete failure and that the path with a hearth is the way to go!

3. Power: advertising is the business soul -> An obviuos rule that applies to any business, even the one of making the world a better place. Holding copyrights disempowers the very words that should be empowering people. This content is supposed to be powerful, so there can't be any barriers between it and the listeners.


If we are all the same being, the moochers are just a sick part of ourlselves, letting them "abuse" the content is one first step for their healing.

Steve can't also feel responsible for misuse of his content. If a suicidal cabal of cultists is born through misinterpreted content, it's the universe freeing the souls that are suffering from ignorance.

So, I would say let it go free-for-all, and the truth, love and power from the content will take care of itself.

Since this is not a mutual-exclusive decision, besides letting it go free-for all, you could provide a translation section on your website for each language and delegate it to trustworthy community members. There are surely a few members that write a lot in here to be considered capable of the task of leading a translation team.

As many other readers I have problems in spreading your content to relatives and friends because of languages barriers, so I'd really like to be on Portuguese-brazilian team

[cnwoods]

Looks like several other aspects of yourself have already pointed you to the other dreamer aspect called Leo Babauta (Zenhabits) and his uncopyrighting experience of a few years now.

The only other point my aspect would point out to your aspect would be to release the consequences as well - ie breach of these conditions is at your own risk and may possibly result in karmic retribution.

Does this mean you may be appearing in the next 'Secret' movie, Bob???

[The Adventurer]

Hi Steve

This is a very interesting question and I am curious what you will find in your investigation. I have thought much about it and while I don't have a solution here are some ideas.

The purpose of intellectual property is to provide a mechanism which gives a person an economic incentive to invest time and energy into producing something that is of value to others, but that once produced is easy to replicate and as a result can leave the author unrewarded for otherwise a significant contribution. Having worked on innovation projects I know that what can take years to figure out the first time, can be taken and used readily.

I believe that genuine value is produced not when a person is doing with with an extrinsic motivation such as being paid for it - as soon as the question "What am I getting out of it?" appears it distinguishably taints what it being done. The best value seems to come when the person loves what they do, would do it anyway, and genuinely and freely wants to share their findings with others who have the same interest and can benefit from them. There is a valid argument that we have to make a living in the physical world (I highly value both the subjective and the objective perspective and think that they just have very different things to offer) and that it only makes sense that a valuable contributor is rewarded accordingly. However just being a valuable contributor isn't a reason to automatically get rewarded - one cannot rely on the courtesy of others to pay back because if someone has an advantage in breaking the courtesy sooner or later it will happen and since they will be better off the behaviour will propagate.

IP is supposedly an intelligent scheme where we have constructed to aid the development of areas which are potentially valuable to humanity but could be ignored. Science is a good example as it can take tremendous resources to make a discovery but once it is there the corporations can take it and make the profit and whoever spent the time and money be left with no reward. So who would bother investing years and millions in a research?

The issue I have with intellectual property is that it sets rules and by nature rules require policing - otherwise they would be meaningless because that's what people would do anyway. However I do not want to be a policeman or to dislike if someone uses my work because this puts me in a very undesired frame of mind - that what I have to contribute is limited and that I am getting unrewarded for what I do, where I fully believe that I have a practically infinite supply of contribution and 100% love what I'm getting from life. So I much prefer to be creative about how to cater for the making a living part and either to give the products of my work freely to others or not to do them at all, than to protect them.

One thing that makes me shiver is withholding information from a prospective learner unless he pays for it. Education is the most fundamental ingredient that makes us human - we need to learn from others to become who we are, and it is a ludicrous proposition to figure everything ourselves. Resources such as the products you recommend or your articles are what can literally take a person's life in a new dimension and make them better people. And we officially and legally have set mechanisms to *prevent* valuable knowledge from reaching every single person who could make use out of it? There have to be other ways that we can implement that resolve the incentive issue much more elegantly. For example while your articles can be copy/pasted easily, the CGWs cannot. Proving the value of your work through free contributions opens great many doors to make a living, and none of these can be replicated and need to be protected by IP. So the work that can be copied is excellent way to advertise and if it is any good it will open plenty of opportunities - free generic contribution and paid specific contribution.

A couple of pointers to resources that I think are relevant: Richard Dawkins' book "The selfish gene" offers an incredible perspective of the physical (and even the non-physical) dimension, which sets a very useful frame of considering IP. Richard Stallman promotes the notion of copyleft - where the work is free for anyone to take, modify and distribute on the proviso that any modifications must also be made free in the same fashion.

[Asten]

One question came to mind when reading this article and some of the responses here:

Is eliminating copyright to extent that people do not have to credit you going to encourage those other parts of yourself (the people) to practice negative values (lies, greed, etc), as they use those materials under the belief that the materials are yours (whether you believe they are yours or you have simply translated/channeled these ideas) and that they can profit from showing them as their own...

...or is it simply making it more available?

Aka, is it beneficial to self-healing or is it encouraging poor alignment with your core values to make these materials completely 100% available?

What will you/these people gain in growth from using your materials in such a way, and what will you/others gain from the spread of those ideas in this way?

I have no answers to these questions, but they're out there for consideration now if you (or I? ) feel it's pertinent.

[tatoeba]

Another idea to help you Steve is the way chosen by Joel Spolsky (Joelonsoftware.com) who created a wiki to have his articles translated through volunteers.

Hope it helps !

[RichardH]

Of course I enjoy the comfort and security of copyright but it doesn't seem to be the tool to obtain my goal. My real interest has moved to other forms of communication , interaction and learning. My goal is providing a higher level of value to the world. So, if everyone on the planet has found the ideas ,that I helped to bring forth, to be helpful in elevating their energy level up a notch, haven't I done my job? Is there really any question of what my life would be like without copyright limits? After all , I'm the man, subjectively speaking.

[IceWolf]

I agree with geofones about the problem of license proliferation. It's useful to choose a popular license, so people can understand it easily, and your work can be combined with the work of other people. The CC licenses are good from that point of view.

I would say that attribution is very important. So if your work is used elsewhere, people reading it can come and find the originals. In this case it would help to deliver more value, and it also helps with website traffic.

"SA", or copyleft, I don't really have any thoughts about at the moment.

And for the reason I posted, it seems most people in this thread are recommending "NC", so I'll be a voice to the contrary. "NC" discourages people from adding value to the work. If people are basing their work on the originals, they can ask permission, and perhaps come to some kind of financial agreement. But if a whole chain of people have built on the work, passing it on as "NC", anyone who wants to use it commercially has to get the permission of everyone who has ever contributed, which is often impossible. Also, if you aren't planning to enforce the condition, it only really inconveniences people who respect your wishes. The people who already infringe your copyrights will continue to do so.

[Chat noir]

Hi,
for almost 2 years I desire to translate in my native language - french - the whole blog.
I think the post "Moving Beyond Copyright" is the signal I was waiting for.

In it's current form, my project is to use the design of the website (with different colors however) and put the blog content's translation (and only the blog).
The french translation site will clearly claims that's it's not SP official website and will provide a visible link to stevepavlina.com.
Each article will start with a warning header which says something like "This is a translation. Click _here_ to read the original post (in english)".

I've already translated some articles, but I wait for a Steve agreement in order to build the HTML site* and put it online (well, as a CS major I'm able to do so).

I bought stevepavlina.fr, and I'm opened to any propositions.

* on the technical side a statically generated website seems to be a good start.
Content is sentences to sentences translation, which is, I think, the best compromise between original sense and idiomatic french translation.

ps : be sure that my comprehension and french skills are far more important than my quite poor english writing skills

[JasonWoof]

Public Domain or CC-BY-SA seem like the obvious choices to me.

I'd like to advice specifically against the "Non-Commercial" option. I've been participating in and reading about the free software community for several years, and have run across some examples where a non-commercial restriction would stop a very powerful charitable use (for example putting content on millions of OLPC laptops to be sold in Africa).

The other reason, is I feel that the non-commercial clause is more ambiguous. for example: is it ok to put NC content on a website that's making money with ads? When there's any chance of being actionable, lawyers will tell you not to touch it. This is particularly concerning to me, because it will tend to be the really big projects/uses that will ask a lawyer first.

Also there are many, many distribution/publishing channels that will accept only CC-BY-SA but not CC-NC (such as wikipedia).


On the choise of Public Domain vs CC-BY-SA, I'd recommend CC-BY-SA because:

1) It's got that good community feel.

2) It comes with an explicit (and widely recognized) request to link back to your original. I think this will hugely benefit people, because on your site it's linked with the rest of your content.

3) It gives you (and your fans) some leverage, if you or they ever want to ask a re-publisher to:

* Add attribution
* Add a link to the original
* Make it clear that it is a modified version

[zetta]

Originally Posted by zetta

Uhm, this is kind of obvious. Since you won't enforce any restrictions, just let go of it completly.

Ding ding ding! I'm proud that Steve came to the same conclusion as me.