I’m an aspiring author, building a novel under CC BY-SA (it’s in french). My wish is to make it some kind of framework for others to be allowed to build more stories, or modify mine and redistribute freely, even commercially.
I don’t plan on making a living from it, there’s no way it could happen (although being paid should not be incompatible with free licenses, but that’s another discussion). The thing is, when I think about the attribution part of the license I’m choosing, I often think it’s too restrictive and should be public domain instead, if my work is really meant to be an open narrative framework.
What are your takes on the attribution license, regarding free licenses for cultural content, especially written content ?
(I’m french so if there are any french speaking people around here, feel free to answer in another language than english)
What is the point of an Open Narrative Framework if anyone can hide your original public domain version by attributing themselves the work and distributing it closed?
This could be made easily through SEO nowadays.
It also involves that derivatives could “improve” without giving back, which could help to other people’s needs.
Basically, what someone already pointed here about maintaining it open.
I get your point.
But if someone is taking something from public domain and distributing it closed, it doesn’t make the original story and artefacts closed. If it is acknowledged the source is public domain, only some derivative works made after it would be considered closed copyright, like Disney would do with every ancient legend they have reshaped. So it reduces possibilities but it doesn’t stop you from making your own derivative works from the original, which is still public domain.
At that point however, maintaining open licensing becomes a legal war, but this kind of war can also happen with appropriation of CC BY-SA content, which also happens now and then.
My point of view is about adding to a “lore”, and not appropriating myself the authorship of a cultural sum of content that got processed through my mind. CC-BY can be far fetched too in some cases.
Some compromise I am getting to is to have single ideas of artefacts and phenomenons from my writings licensed as public domain, like a library, and more complete works like chapters or whole book under CC-BY SA (or Art Libre).
Although in certains cases, some of my short stories will be public domain too I think, because I don’t believe I should have a right on all of them, but it will be on a case by case basis.
Much complex :D
First, the kind of war you try to represent with public domain and copyleft is not, in anyway comparable.
Public domain content doesn’t have almost any kind of protection agaisnt some entity (personal or not) claiming property.
In copyleft world, you don’t have only to rely in yourself, you can create a collective, organization or rely in third party collectives dedicated to that, which exist and are not a few.
The “lore” gets closed in that world since the moment that a propietary copy gets famous and doesn’t contribute back to the original, which, in fact, has no central point of avaliability but it is almost a just 1-release version that in the moment you stop, it will become difficult to track.
Here I see confusion between openness and freedom.
The freedom is in the possibility you have to get each avaliable option, and not in the number of options which is the case in openness.
In the moment that there is a possibility to choose an option which prevents choosing the rest, the freedom is gone.
Do you want avaliability almost forever? It is preferable that you mount a collective or find an entity big enough to handle it.
Yeah, you’re right. Tracking the original source (and certifiying a timestamp on it) is key in a legal framework. But why would it be more difficult for Public Domain than CC BY-SA for instance, if some reliable source certifies the content ?
I get what you’re saying, I’m not trying to be contrarian, and I do agree that the strength of Copyleft is that of the collectives. I’m also against appropriation, and I think it’s great to have a strong copyleft framework.
Aren’t there collectives fighting for public domain content too ?
By the way thanks for adding to the discussion, I really appreciate that.