Open Source Blogging

I had the pleasure of interviewing David from the David in Japan blog about his recent uncopyright move to make his an open source blog.

Q1: David, some would call you foolish while others view your recent move to give away your blog content for others to use and bravery. Before deciding to offer an uncopyright on your work, what went through your head?

It wasn’t quite as difficult of a decision for me as you might think. I’ve never really been a fan of copyright, at least not the current model of it. When this country (USA) started copyright was something like 7 years or 14 years, enough to make a small profit before turning over whatever it was to the public for everyone to then profit. So I’m just skipping that initial 7 years. In terms of money and fame, which is really what we are all thinking about when we look at copyright, I don’t think a lack of copyright is going to hurt the possibility of either of these things, and may even help them. Consider this: Would we still know who Dracula and Sherlock Holmes were if those texts weren’t in the public domain? Maybe, maybe not.

Q2: Since offering the world unfettered access to your blog content has that resulted in a positive experience for you and/or new opportunities?

You mean besides this interview? No real new opportunities yet, but a lot of kind words from people which is nice.

Q3: The question on the mind of a lot of bloggers is that their content is theirs and theirs alone and nobody has any right to use any of their content. Does that content position make sense to you today?

Well, it’s not up to me to judge what others do. If they feel their content is theirs and want to hold it close, more power to them. To me personally, I don’t know if the position has ever made sense. Specifically in regards to writing, the purpose of writing is to share. Everyone wants their writing to be read. I suspect that even people who write privately in journals and diaries hold the secret hope that sometime after their death someone will read what they wrote. Limiting access to one’s writing seems to go against this basic reason.

Q4: What percentage of your work do you think people use and link back to you or give you attribution?

Well my blog started as a family only affair. Recently other people have started discovering it and this has led me to expand it and make it more accessible to the public, but many of my essays and articles are very much just directed at family and friends, so I’m not sure how many people will even want to use those! But I think most people who use my work will at least give me credit. Not like it will cost them anything. But if they don’t and want to pass the work off as their own instead, well, I’m honored.

Q5: You’ve joined the ranks of some pretty powerful bloggers in boldly giving away your work for people to use. What do you think the lesson is that the big bloggers, including yourself learned that the smaller bloggers have not?

I don’t know if I would call myself a big blogger, but thanks. I don’t know what the lesson would be, honestly. Good karma, maybe.

Q6: What is your opinion about how protectable web content is to begin with, especially the written word?

Me: Well, nothing can stop people from taking content. Especially with text. Just highlight it, copy and save into another file. Copyright is not really about stopping this –that would be impossible — it is more about stopping people from then turning around and selling the content without intent to pass any money back to the author of the content. So, no, I don’t think web content can really be protected at all.

Q7: How do you respond to the statement that I hear from others, “My blog content is how I want to earn my income. Why would I ever consider giving it away? Only fools would do that.”

In terms of blogging, a blogger earns an income based on traffic, and the only way to maintain traffic is to constantly produce new material, so thus older material matters less than new material anyways, but one can argue this both ways pretty effective so it comes down to your own personal feeling.

Q8: Are we crazy for giving away our work for free?

Yep. But to give a positive spin there, many of the people we worship as some of the brightest in history were called crazy for most of their lives too, so we are in good company.