Creative Commons License

vjack of Atheist Revolution has a great article explaining how to license blog articles to prevent them being simply copy/pasted without credit. This hasn’t really been a problem for me, although I was contacted a few times by people saying that my 101 Atheist Quotes article had been copied a load of times. In this case I don’t think the license would work, seeing as none of the quotes were my own work.

I now have a Creative Commons License which restricts my work to non-commercial and non-derivative use:

Creative Commons License
The Atheist Blogger by Adrian Hayter is licensed under a Creative Commons NCND License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.

In other news, I might finally finish my review of SPORE today. I’ve been working on it over the last 2 days and it is currently just shy of 2,000 words. Hopefully it’ll be out later, if I can stop playing SPORE for 10 minutes that is.

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  1. September 11th, 2008 at 13:46 | #1

    I never understood why people prevent derivative works. As long as there is attribution why not allow people to modify what you create?

  2. September 11th, 2008 at 14:29 | #2

    I can’t see how people could simply modify my articles without destroying the entire purpose of them. The new license permits people to quote, or post extracts, but not to take something I write and modify it so it takes me out of context.

    I’ve always thought of modification more on the software kind of things. If you give me a good reason why I should let people modify then I will change it.

  3. Funny
    September 11th, 2008 at 16:18 | #3

    Sorry, not related to today’s post but I saw this article online today and found it amusing/worrying.

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/09/11/ep.faith.medicine/index.html?eref=rss_latest

    Also just found out that McCain’s running mate doesn’t believe in evolution. Scary, very scary.

    p.s. The google ad at the top of this page displays “Meet Christian Girls Free”…..sweet!

  4. September 11th, 2008 at 17:38 | #4

    People can already quote you (and out of context) even if you kept all the copyrights. You can’t stop that.

    As for allowing derivative works, well, you never know what one might create unless they do so first. But in any case I don’t expect you’ll go all RIAA on them and demand that they take it down, if it’s something good. Generally derivative licenses are good for art but I don’t see what harm it would do to allow it.

    A non-derivative license might stop someone who wants to do a positive derivative work but it will probably not stop someone who wants to do something malicious.

    As for example: If you write a story which has a main character and a setting, with a derivative licence, I can take that character and put him in another story of my own. I take your idea and build up on it.

  5. September 11th, 2008 at 17:51 | #5

    Yes but as you stated, someone might post something malicious, which with a license I could easily make a case for it’s removal.

    If anyone does want to write a positive piece using my material, the license allows for them to contact me, at which point I will gladly let them, assuming I read the article first.

  6. September 11th, 2008 at 18:38 | #6

    That’s pretty much what anyone can do under normal copyrights. They still stifle innovation though.

  7. September 13th, 2008 at 12:16 | #7

    I’m glad you found the post useful. I think a CC license is a good idea for all bloggers. Enforcement can be a hassle, but I’ve been happy to grant almost any request I’ve received about use of my content.

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