Blocking hotlinks from MySpace made me feel a bit like the old codger yelling, “Hey you damn kids, get off my lawn!” Copyright and intellectual property are complex issues on which I have a very strong opinion, so let me expand:
At a basic level, creators and authors decide how their works are used. With technology and the web making everyone a creator, more people get to make the choices that used to be limited to Big Media. You have an implicit copyright on anything you create, and can choose how to distribute, recieve credit, and/or charge for it. If your stated wishes aren’t followed, you have many of the same legal recourses the entertainment industry has abused to prop up their obsolete business model.
Sadly, their delays and resistance to viable legitimite entertainment downloads has led to a public attitude that everything should be free to take and use without limits. While that isn’t what many professional and amatuer authors choose, it does have amazing possibilities when an individual or community chooses to free their creation. Witness Wikipedia, a growing number of full online textbooks, and the increasing content under Creative Commons licenses instead of All Rights Reserved Copyright.
Academia and open source software have known this power for a long time: by building on the credited work of our predecessors and peers, we can achieve more in collaboration than we could in isolation. I believe in that ideal, but value my creations and have chosen to retain the control of full copyright over everything on this site. That said, I’m still happy to share when asked and credited. In other words, you’re welcome to lounge on my lawn if I come out and open the gate for you.
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