If you put it on the internet you give it away
Editor’s Note: A TeleRead regular, Court Merrigan, has a very interesting post centering around the Copyscape application on his blog. I would suggest you go over there and read it. I certainly learned something when I did just that. Here’s a little excerpt to get you started:
A writer named David B. Dale (a pseudonym) has a site. On it he posts stories of 299 words. It boasted 197,577 visitors the last time I was there. I am not posting a link. Here’s why: … Not only has Mr. Dale copyrighted his work, but he has “protected” his page with Copyscape. Which boasts a homepage copied from Google’s. ,,,
As for writers, there’s no keeping your stories and books yours, all yours. Unless you print it out and put it in a locked safe. In which case no one would ever read it. That’s not what a writer wants. It’s not what I want, anyway. I want people to read what I’ve written. The enemy of a writer is not piracy. It’s obscurity.
If you put content on the internet, you give it away. That’s the reality. Rather than fight it, I think it behooves writers and artists of all stripes to embrace this reality.
February 12th, 2009 at 1:55 am
I’d just like to add that David B Dale has stopped by the site and commented. Come on over and have a look at what he has to say, and please add your comments if you’d like.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I truly don’t understand this logic. It’s true that authors cannot keep others from violating copyright. However, this is true regardless of the Internet. The Internet is a communications network, that’s all. If anything, it increases the need to find some way to protect intellectual property–because increasingly IP is all that matters.
I believe that affordable electronic fiction is the future but affordable does not have to mean free.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
February 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
That was a nice essay, and it was also good of Mr Dale that he wrote in. A collegial, friendly exchange.
As for Creative Commons and discouraging widespread piracy, I think in general a personal appeal would work best. Something like, ‘I worked very hard on this story and it represents the best I could do at the time. I’m glad if you enjoyed reading it, but please don’t copy it and send it around. Instead you can just tell people about this site, and they can come here and read it. Thank you.’
February 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Thanks, pond. I suppose a personal appeal might stop some folks – but not those out to make an illicit profit. But then, as has been amply demonstrated with music and movies, nothing stops those people. They will pirate and pirate until there is no more pirating to be done.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:51 am
I have been using a free service called FairShare — which gives me an RSS feed for each time someone copies my content.
http://beta.fairshare.cc
It even tells you when someone is putting advertising on it, which is what makes my blood boil the most.
February 13th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Hello Jim, I tried to put my blog address into FairShare, just out of curiosity, but was repeatedly informed this URL is not valid. So I can’t comment on the service itself. But prima facie this seems to be merely a slightly less intrusive form of what Copyscape “does”. I wonder whether it is any more accurate. I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt, though, since I couldn’t actually try it myself.
A CC license of some sort, say one not allowing commercial use, should have the same effect, though, Jim, I would think.