23 November, 2005

Setting my boundaries

It's taken me a while to find this article (via an El Reg response I didn't quite understand), but it expresses my opinion: that Creative Commons licences are pointless other than a naïve political statement, and existing copyright laws are more than adequate.

The most favourable interpretation I can find concludes that CC overlies, but certainly doesn't supercede, copyright, defining the additional rights (beyond standard fair use) the content producer permits the content recipient.

I can see how CC might be seductive to some: "Freedom! Community! Sharing! Love!". However, on a legal level, it means very, very little, and anyway, I don't remotely share those ideals.

Long-term readers of this blog will be aware that my priorities are the rights of the provider, not of the recipient. For example, I object to Google AutoLink and greasemonkey scripts which attempt to modify my content. If I'd intended additional links, I'd have put them in myself: my rights as author extend to what I choose not to say.

In as much as I'm aware of an audience at all, I publish text and graphics/photos for readers and viewers i.e. their (your) role, so far as I'm concerned, is mostly passive, and the relationship is primarily one-way.
Nothing personal, folks, and in my wish to be unambiguous, I suspect the previous sentence might come across as aggressive and overstating my true views. I hope visits to the Ministry are enjoyable, and welcome comments; I merely withhold permission for visitors to redecorate or wander off with the teaspoons!

So; to be absolutely clear:
all material, textual and graphical, published at the Ministry is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Nothing is placed in the public domain, and I do not offer Creative Commons rights.

As anyone who can see beyond CC-evangelist propaganda will understand, that's far from a blanket ban on usage (fair use, remember?), merely being a clarification that this is my property, and remains such unless I specifically say otherwise, on a case-by-case basis (and I'm actually quite approachable).