A Copyfighter’s Musings

1.  So, I’ve been using the attribution/non-commercial/share-alike license from Creative Commons.  I had been using the last two to encourage further dissemination of non-commercial works.  I had also been using the non-commercial one because I’m still not sure how I’d feel about, say, someone compiling all my blog postings and selling them as a book (not like that would ever happen, but…).  I don’t really mind limited commercial uses of my work; but, I’m still unsure if what sort of line I’d draw.

I’ve been trying to think more about this since the Robert Helmer of the Daily Whirl contacted me about adding my site.  Marty Schimmer got pretty angry about the use of his feeds for commercial purposes (though he gave an important clarification later about bandwidth costs). Now, I’ve got no problem with the limited use that Daily Whirl’s making of my site.  Frankly, I’m not even sure I could say that they’re legally doing anything wrong; they’re just using my headlines, and they’re linking right back to me.  Linking is still a pretty murky territory, so I don’t know if this is the case. Does putting an RSS feed out there make this sort of linkage more ok? (Using my headlines and linking back to me seems quite like Ticketmaster v. Tickets.com, but I might be wrong.)

In any case, I realized through this experience that adding the non-commercial/share-alike portions of my CC license might go too far in undermining the purpose of my attribution qualifier.  I want my stuff to be distributed freely and easily, but I’m not sure I want to stop people from doing so just because they’re got ad-banners on their site.

Anyone else run up against similar conflicts?

2.  So I’ve been getting a little nostalgic recently.  I’ve wanted to watch Fraggle Rock, which is one of the few TV shows I remember watching as a kid.  It was an incredible Jim Henson production, plenty of cute songs and very, very silly characters.  I can still remember some of the songs, or at least some of the funny noises and motions those puppets used to make.  It’d be nice to see it again.

But I can’t find it anywhere. It’s not on Hallmark/Odyssey Channel any more. It’s not on DVD, and all the VHSs are out of stock at Amazon.  I don’t even  think they sell the toys, view-masters, books, music, or other collectibles any more.  However, there are plenty of people selling illegitimate DVD/VCDs on eBay.

So, if the copyright owners don’t want to make money off this stuff any more, why can’t those illegitimate copies be legitimate ones?  Again, what’s the point of bottling this stuff up for another century if the copyright owners don’t want to make money off it?  I’d gladly buy DVDs if they produced them; I’d be less glad buying VHS, but I’d probably just grumble and fork over the money anyway.

I’m not saying, Mr. Rehnquist, that I just want stuff for free; I’m saying, give me a way to legitimately acquire it.  The public domain is key to preserving this stuff.  What’s the point of letting it die?

Filed by Derek Slater at 4:07 pm under General news
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