Those who want to republish the content of “Promise of Reason” are welcome to do so with or without any thanks or back links to me or Promise of Reason. Until now, all available copyright laws protect the copying of content from blogs. Now, I’m granting full permission to use any of my content on Promise of Reason in any way you like. I release my copyright on this content. From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, and reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.

Credit:

While you are under no obligation to do so, I would appreciate it if you give me credit for any work of mine that you use, and ideally, link back to the original. All the content on this site is open source and free as freedom.

Why I’m releasing copyright:
I’m not a big fan of copyright laws anyway, especially as they’re being applied these days by corporations, used to crack down on the little guys so they can continue their large profits.
Copyrights are often touted as protecting the artist, but in most cases the artist gets very little while the corporations make most of the money. I’m trying this experiment to see whether releasing copyright really hurts the creator of the content.
I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.
The lack of copyright, and blatant copying by other artists and even businesses, never hurt Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to images such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, or the Vitruvian Man. It’s never hurt Shakespeare, A.R. Rahman or even Tulsidas. I doubt that it’s ever really hurt any artist (although I might just be ignorant here).
And while I’m no da Vinci or Tulsidas, I can’t help but wonder whether copyright hurts me or helps me. If someone feels like sharing my content on their blog, or in any other form for that matter, that seems like a good thing for me. If someone wanted to share my article with 100 friends, I don’t see how that hurts me. My work is being spread to many more people than I could do myself. That’s a plus, as I see it.
And if someone wants to take my work and improve upon it, as artists have been doing for centuries, I think that’s a wonderful thing. If they can take my favorite posts and make something funny or inspiring or thought-provoking or even sad … I say more power to them. The creative community only benefits from derivations and inspirations.
This isn’t a new concept, of course, and I’m freely ripping ideas off here. Which is kind of the point. As well as this uncopyright is original idea of Leo Babuta.
Counter arguments and all that:
There are a number of objects that will likely be brought up to this idea, and while I can’t possibly answer all of them, here are a few of my responses in anticipation:
1. Google rank will go down. My understanding is that Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates on other sites, when it comes to PageRank. I don’t know how much of a penalty that is. If people duplicate my content (which they already are, even without permission), it’s possible that my PageRank will drop and people will have a harder time finding my content on Google search. If that’s the case, I accept that penalty. I’ve never been one to go for SEO techniques anyway, so this is nothing new to me.
2. Who knows what people will do with your work? Someone could take my work, turn it into a piece of … baloney … and put my name on it. They could translate it with all kinds of errors. They could … well, they could do just about anything. But that kind of thinking stems from a mind that wants to control content … while I am of the opinion that you can’t control it, and even if you can, it’s not a good thing. What if someone takes my work and turns it into something brilliant, and becomes the next Anu Mallik? Or more likely, what if they take the work and extend the concepts and make it even more useful, to even more people? Release control, and see what happens. People are wonderful, creative creatures. Let’s see what they can do.
3. You’re making other bloggers look bad. Perhaps; if you want to see things in a negative light. But I’m not doing this as a challenge to other bloggers, or as a comment on their policies. I’m doing it simply to stay in line with my values. And who knows? Maybe others will be inspired by this in some way. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, please don’t judge others based on what I do.
4. But … but … they’re stealing from you! You can’t steal what is given freely. I call this sharing, not piracy.
Inspirations: Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig; and GNU by Richard Stallman. I will appreciate if you are a blogger and want to follow uncopyright, please do so for freedom of thoughts.

What to do next?

Use uncopyright on your blog

paste the following code in your text box/sidebar/page/post

<a rel=”license” href=”http://promiseofreason.com/open-source-blogging-feel-free-to-steal-my-content”><img alt=”Uncopyright - open source blogging” style=”border-width:0″ src=”http://promiseofreason.com/wp-content/gallery/theme-images/uncopyright256.jpg”/></a><br/>This work is free to copy <a rel=”license” href=”http://promiseofreason.com/open-source-blogging-feel-free-to-steal-my-content”>Uncopyright - open source blogging</a>

Note: To use 64 pixel, 100 pixel, 256 pixel image respectively, change number in image url to 64, 100, 256 respectively.

Thank you.