Just because no one else will, I will answer Burningbird’s challenge.
Everything about this weblog that I am responsible for, in the past and henceforth, I hereby cede to the public domain. Note, please, that the lovely photograph to your left (if you are sighted and viewing with images on) is Shelley’s, and not mine to cede; nor am I entitled to cede my husband’s rare contributions. (I’ll check with him tonight, and update if needed.He’s cool. Ergo his stuff is public-domain also.) Note also that this blog consists of everything in the caveatlector folder of the yarinareth.net domain. Nothing else on Yarinareth has (yet) been so ceded. (But could happen.)
I’ll put a note to this effect in the sidebar when I get a minute. (Heh. After five chapters of Shelley’s book, I think I can say much of the above in RDF/XML now.)
Do I know what I’m doing? Yeah, I do, and I’m pretty sure I still qualify as compos mentis. I’m not a lawyer, but I was reading about copyright law (in another context) before I ever heard the word “blog.” I know what the public domain is. I know what protections copyright offers; I know what protections the threat of a copyright suit offers. (Rather wider ones, in my experience.)
And I’m just not interested.
This is not to say, mind you, that I give implicit approval to every conceivable use of the design or writing on this page, something Shelley seems to fear happens when the copyright noose is cut. Far from it. I’ve just put away the legal stick, is all; I’ve other sticks. Treat CavLec badly, and you know I’m going to howl if I find out about it. Won’t sue. Will howl.
If the offense is particularly egregious, I rather suspect some folks will take the trouble to howl along with me. I hope it never happens, and firmly believe it never will—but if it does, I think the howling will stop the offense far faster and with far less fallout than any threatened or actual lawsuit (over a blog?) ever could.
I also suspect that people will keep asking and informing me about use of my stuff, a courtesy that Phil rightly values. I really do think that. People are okay.
As for Shelley’s fear of someone posing as her via her writing—look, I am me and you are not. Shell is Shell and we are not. No poseur can take that away. A weblog is particularly difficult to use to maintain such a pose, I should think; any attempt to mirror is just that, and Google can ferret out the original in femtoseconds. The same would be true of any attempt I can imagine to print-publish a blog.
My putative howls of bloggy outrage (assuming I were to bother; I might well not) represent the Cervantean defense I spoke highly of before. I believe in the Cervantean defense. It is constructive. It adds to the wealth of the world, and even (potentially) to its courtesy; after the second half of Don Quixote came out I have trouble believing that the embarrassed ripoff artist tried that stunt again.
So here I am, testing my beliefs.
I’m not doing this to tweak Shelley or Jonathon or Phil, even though Shelley’s post is the immediate spur. I’m not doing it to be a trendsetter or even an example, or I’d have done it when the Creative Commons launch was at its height. I quite accept, in Jonathon’s words, that “writers might wish to exert a degree of control over how their work is used and who also feel no obligation to donate their work to the public domain.”
(I have grave doubts about whether allowing writers to exert all the control they might wish is a good idea, but that’s a topic for plenty of other posts.)
I’m just trying to put my blog where my mouth is, I guess. I’m not a Writer, as I’ve said before. I hope to demonstrate ways of behaving toward our personal creations and those of others that aren’t funneled through the lawyers. C’mon in, the water’s fine.
Because now Caveat Lector is public domain. And nothing bad is going to happen to me—or the blog—because of it.
Update: Aquarionics checks to see whether I mean it. Look quick, before he goes back to a design that looks good, unlike mine.
