The tip being that other people see that people realise their content is of value so they want to “have it as their own” because they did not think in that direction on their own and it kinda makes sense to them.

One of the blades cuts deep and makes one think and add to what was written and give one a direction in which to write an article.

I remember Chris Brogan saying that going out and sitting in a cafe’,reading and talking was his inspiration for the articles that he writes. To my mind very few have their finger on the pulse as does Chris and I always enjoy and learn from his insights. I told my husband that Chris know his craft and many a time one fall in love with him as a person! {Now I said it!}

Then there is the other side of the blade that turns in the soul of the author that says: “mine!” “I said that first” and it should be acknowledged or I should be rewarded every time that something in this vane is written!

The point is that we are dealing with language and ideas. Once an Idea is out there is kind of goes places and can we really stop it.

The other point is collaboration and creation spurs more ideas and great inventions and do we want to prevent this?

He also proposes that copyright should expire after a flat ’10 years.’

I feel that creativity should be rewarded, and that copyright is a good way to control what is done with your specific creation. But when you release something, you release it to the world. Whether it succeeds or not is not a question of mere PROMOTION, but of the quality of the work.

People should not be allowed to lock down ideas, stories, or media forever plus 50/100 years from reissue. There may be nothing new under the sun and everything that can be said has been said, but it hasn’t been said my way.

Here’s another post by Max dealing with copyright and how it will die: http://maxbarry.com/writing/bits/copyright.html

Ideas are different than physical property. Even IP law acknowledges this. ‘Theft’ and ‘infringement’ are different for a reason. You cause no loss to others when you repeat their ideas. And it may be your perrogative under current law, but it’s not under what is moral or right (to me personally).

Positing that you should make a buck off someone else’s link to you, when they’ve used your work under the fair use doctrine, is dangerous territory. Should Google be paying us for people that find us via search results, and link to us? I’m not so sure. Links make the Web go ’round.

However, I can understand how it feels to have done the work and watch what, in these cases, are essentially bots pick up what you’ve done and repurpose it — it feels a little icky. And it is. But unless they’re taking the “spirit” of your work, it’s legal. (And isn’t this essentially what Google is doing, too?) If they want to sell ads on their own aggregate/link-farm sites, that’s their prerogative.

One final thing about copyright: You automatically own the copyright for every creative work you produce, whether you note that officially on your site or not.

All that said, your ideas for solutions are really good ones. I especially like #1 and #2. CC is a partial solution, but you can’t use it to make your original copyright stick more — you just use it to license it to who you want to license it to.

Phew.

If someone creates a work, they have a right to do anything they want to it (profit from it or not profit from it) it unless they’ve given that right to someone else or the public domain. I might call this a natural right–a right of property.

Using that creator’s property without his permission is theft, misrepresenting it as your own is fraud.

Steve, you can choose to let people copy your content without hearing a peep from you. However, others, e.g. Justin and I, chose not to let others freely use our content. It’s our prerogative.

Karen, copy and paste from the web used to be able to be controlled via Javascript, and it likely still may be on some sites. However, these controls are useless, as they would do more to prevent fair use than flagrant copyright infringement. Next time you encounter a site which prevents you from copy/pasting, hit Ctrl+U in your browser: voila! you now have access to the source code of the page, and all of its contents, unfettered.