Very interesting, but does it matter?

Over at Anarchangel, one of my daily reads, and probably the best original (original writing) gun blog going, Chris seems to want to sign on to a crafter's creed involving blogging.

Such creeds are as old as organized crafts, and were the original basis for craft unions (the Colonial silver and copper smiths are an example of that), which became labor unions, which became, generally, a P.I.T.A.

I'm not sure about this on several levels. Chris' explanation of the Creative Commons License is simple enough to understand, but tying one's work to a legal standard, when the medium it is displayed in refuses to accept such standards, seems to me to be a contradiction in terms.

Now, some who blog seem to feel strongly about their blog being personal property, and a few of those "some" actually hope to turn their blogs into a profitable enterprise. I'm not one of those. My blog costs me $7.16/month to operate, plus a few pennysworth of electricity to run my computer, and that is a negligible cost to me. I don't feel it necessary to sell space here to recover my cost, and I fer damn sure wouldn't want the Infernal Revenooer Servants to come calling because they thought this blog was a goldmine operating under their snoopy radar.

The way I see it, I have thoughts which I want to share with the world, and this blog is the best way to do that. There is a remote possibility that one or two of those thousands of thoughts I've shared might be commercially valuable, but probably not valuable enough to make me independently wealthy, so I don't even consider putting a leash on those thoughts so I might yank them back from freeloaders.

The thing about the Creative Commons License that gravels my ass the most, though, is just the idea that some folks think blogging needs CONTROLS.

Here's my weak analogy: I own a well. I pump water from my well, take a cup of it and throw it out in the street. Is that still my water as it lies in the street? If it is, does that mean I could charge you money if you ran your tires through it and carried it away on the inside of your fender-wells?

I don't think so. I think that when I took my water and threw it in the public thoroughfare, knowing that I had little to no control of it after I did so, I gave up my claim of ownership of that water.

I can understand the principle behind most claims of intellectual property rights, especially where prior record of value can be established, but ordinary expressions of opinion don't count, IMHO. Yes, we have all seen a blogger or two claim that their every thought, connected to reality or not, which they ever posted on their blogs, is intellectual property with a finite value, but where the rubber meets the road, where reality must be assessed, do such claims ever stand up?

The way I see it, the cash register is king. If you think your blogging might be valuable, prove it by selling it to the public. Put up a turnstile and charge admission. Some bloggers do, and Bill O'Reilly probably pays his Long Island mortgage with those fools' money. Such sales are the only way you can ever establish proof of the finite value of your opinion as an intellectual asset. If you're unwilling or unable to sell it, well then, you don't really need control over the rest of us with a license, do you?

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UPDATE: 122109 2317 PST: Chris Byrne has an interesting take on imputed licensing in publishing a blog. See his comment below. I have no quarrel with his facts, but my point remains: I don't give a rip. If you think your words have value, do what you want to protect that value. My words don't carry a money price tag, those are moral scruples to be exchanged, not rubles. Somehow, I don't think the First is at risk in my words, either.

Comments

[Chris Byrne]

Actually RD, you're thinking about this backwards.

Everything you write publicly is ALREADY covered by a more RESTRICTIVE license, general copyright; whether you explicitly state so or not.

Creative commons is just an easy way to say "I'm not going to enforce all my rights under copyright".

[Rivrdog]

John, what gravels my ass is that ANYONE would try to establish rules of property for something normally given away, namely free advice.

Sure, no one is suing anyone at the moment, but the whole purpose of establishing property rights for unsolicited opinions is to put such conflict into the realm of possibility, no?

I have zero quarrel with protecting ideas that are intended to be value-producing or value-enhancing, but if I say Nancy Pelosi is an ass, why should I claim that gem as a property? Such opinion should not be protectable under any set of rules. To protect ordinary opinion or punditry cheapens and demeans actual, valuable intellectual property.

Just MHO, of course, and under my doctrine, not worth a sou.

[JohnOC]

The license in question is a lot more along the lines of "give me credit for what I did if you re-print it, and don't try to make money off my work without asking me first." Do either of those things really gravel your ass that much?