We should all copyright our content….shouldn’t we? For most content producers, this isn’t something that is ever even considered. Of course we copyright our content, we wrote it and we don’t want anyone to steal it. Right?
Not everyone thinks this way. Zen Habits founder Leo Babauta has an interesting policy on content copyright on his blog. He allows anyone to copy or share anything he writes or releases. There are bloggers who don’t chase people who steal their content however I can’t think of any other top blogger who has this view. He explains his reasons in his post ‘Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content‘.
I encourage you to read the whole page. Here are some key excerpts from it:
From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.
While you are under no obligation to do so, I would appreciate it if you give me credit for any work of mine that you use, and ideally, link back to the original. If you feel like spreading a copy of my ebook, I’d appreciate payment. I’d prefer people buy my ebook, but if they want to share with friends, they have every right to do so.
Just to clarify, this post is an official notification that my writing here at Zen Habits and in the Zen To Done ebook are now in the public domain. I hereby waive all claim of copyright in this work; it may be used or altered in any manner without attribution or notice to the me. Attribution, of course, is appreciated.
And if someone wants to take my work and improve upon it, as artists have been doing for centuries, I think that’s a wonderful thing. If they can take my favorite posts and make something funny or inspiring or thought-provoking or even sad … I say more power to them. The creative community only benefits from derivations and inspiration
Leo’s View on Copyrighting
Copyrighting is a topic I have a vested interest in, particularly as that is how I make money on the web. My livelihood depends on my ability to produce good content; whether it be for this blog, someone else’s blog or for a book or product I release.
I’m not an expert on copyright, far from it, but a lot of what Leo says does make sense. Firstly, I don’t think copyrights are really effective for the little guys. If multi billion dollar companies in the movie industry can’t stop some people copying their products, what hope do we have? Secondly, people who don’t attribute content you wrote to you are not going to give attribution whether you ask politely or not. Those that do give attribution would probably do so anyway.
On the issue of lost ebook revenues, Leo notes:
If people buy my ebook and then distribute it to 20 people, and each of those distributes it to 20 more, and those to 20 more … I’ve lost $76,000 in ebook revenues. Perhaps. That’s if you agree with the assumption that all those people would have bought the ebook if it hadn’t been freely distributed. I don’t buy that. In this example, thousands of people are reading my work (and learning about Zen Habits) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any content creator.
I do agree that many people who will download a premium eBook for free would never have paid for it anyways. I imagine a small percentage of people who illegally download a digital book would have purchased it if there was no other way to do so. Having thousands more people read your book is in itself a good thing, but these people could hardly be called ‘quality readers’. It’s doubtful they would pay for any product you release so it’s doubtful they will benefit you in any way, apart from telling others where to get your products for free.
If your content is being read by more people, your profile will be raised. More people will know who you are and what you do and that is a good thing. Does it outweigh the negative problems that occur when someone does steal your content?
It’s All About the Benjamins
Perhaps I’m completely wrong on the issue of ebook piracy, I’m not so sure. I’m planning on releasing a lot of books this year and I admit it would annoy me if someone uploaded them illegally somewhere. I know this is silly. Piracy is never going to go away and it’s part and parcel of the music, book and movie industry. It’s something we may all just need to accept and move on.
The big issue is money. I need to make money from my work online. I have bills to pay, mouths to feed. If I could adopt a free model whereby all my products were released for free and I still made good money, I would do so. It would be simpler in many respects. I wouldn’t have to provide support, deal with payment issues etc. Leo Babauta can release products for free. He’s a thought leader within his niche and has hundreds of thousands of people on his email list so he can earn money in other ways. Many other leaders within the same niche don’t have the same view on copyrighting so I’m not sure who is right (if anyone).
Selling affordable products is, in my opinion, a better solution. People are less likely to look for illegal versions of a products if it is fairly priced and you can still make money by volume.
Another model that many content producers adopt is to offer their product for free (or nearly free) and sell support at a premium price. It works well for many people but not everyone wants the regular hours that good support demands.
Those Who Are Against Plagiarism
On the opposite spectrum of Leo Babauta is Jonathan Bailey, a great blogger that I use to work with a lot. Jonathan writes frequently about copyrighting issues on his blog Plagiarism Today. He feels passionately about the subject and writes tutorials specifically for people who have suffered from plagiarism.
His blog is a fantastic resource and contains example letters that can be sent to those who steal your content as well as their hosting company etc. I recently had to deal with someone illegally offering my book somewhere so I appreciate the work he does. It wasn’t a huge concern for me but I imagine how someone who sells a product for thousands feels when someone uploads their product somewhere illegally.
Jonathan is not alone in his fight against plagiarism. A quick search on Google will show you that there are hundreds of groups and organisations set up to fight against copyright theft.
Overview
My opinion on copyrighting is not fully formulated. I hope you don’t think this is a cop out; it’s not. I’ve read a lot of articles on the subject but I don’t feel like I know enough about the subject in order to give a yah or nay to either side. I’m sure many of you will sit on the fence with me :)
On the surface the idea of sharing our content and attributing any content we use seems ideal. It doesn’t work like that in practice. I’m not going to lie. My main concern is my income being effected. I’m aware of the benefits of more people seeing my work however I’m also acutely aware about how copyright theft can affect me.
I’d love to hear your opinion on this subject so I encourage you to take the time to leave a comment below.
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
Thats interesting – pick your fights carefully!
In the fashion world, another way of dealing with being ripped off, is to put the budget for anti-piracy into designing. Some fashion houses just get on with their passion and use their precious resources to keep innovating, keeping one step ahead of the copiers. That way you get to a position where you are known as the innovator, the original content becomes the truly valuable commodity and the rip off stuff is getting your name out there, but nobody is really fooled by the knock off stuff, which is always going to be dirt cheap or have an air of cheap.
I guess that sorts out the innovative men from the boys. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with that. But if you have a dozen books in you, let the copy cats and cheaters take the first few and market you, so you can really cash in on the last 6 or 8!
It’s a good way to look at it. I have seen many authors say the same thing i.e. that obscurity is worst than piracy.
I would say that is normally the case. I have seen some instances when it didn’t work out that way. I wrote an article that was thousands of words long yet got no comments…then I found some spammer and copied and pasted as their own…taking the time to remove all links that were inside the article to my blog. The annoying thing is, the article had lots of comments on his blog!
I think you are right. One of the biggest problems is that a lot of people do not think they are doing wrong. People wrongly assume that every image on Google can be used freely and that articles can be copied and published as their own. I don’t think you will change the mindset of a lot of these people unless they are put in the same position.
Copyright is an ongoing battle. On some issues, there really is no point putting up a fight. I found that out through my old blog BloggingTips. I would report a blog for scraping my content and by the time I did that, I had found several more who were doing it. It was pointless.
For some things, you should fight. For example, I saw Darren Rowse recently post about someone who had completely copied his unique ProBlogger design and passed it off as their own.
I had a couple of small businesses take my logo and try make out on Twitter that they were associated with my company. I would never have known about it, had they not been caught out by members of my network who police the airwaves – my brand is their brand, they are protective of what we stand for, so they were jumping up and down about the impudence of these two “imposters”! I was able to approach them direct, explain they didnt have permission to use the logo and straightaway they removed it.
Two interesting things came out of this. One of the”violators” thought that it was OK to use the logo because he was a subscriber to the blog and identified with what we do – so if he is to be believed, he didnt view us as a company, more a philosophy, and he saw the logo as some sort of badge, a bit like people use their football club badge as an avatar, and nobody assumes they are from the football club. So that blew my head on one side, is he for real? but it got me thinking on another – if he is for real, wow!
After a bit of mulling over, I am close to coming up with the wordage to basically “watermark” the site by saying on every page – The only specialists associated with this site are those who are listed on this site. So, make up your own mind about other companies who are claiming to be our associates.
And similarly to “stop plagiarism haha”
All articles on our site are original, and we don’t give permission to anyone, apart from the associates listed here, to reproduce our info in part or full on any other site. So if you see our articles / words anywhere outside of our circle, please make your own mind up about the person whose site it is on.
Whether that does anything I dont know, what do you think?
Hi Kevin,
I must say that although my own knowledge of the copyright laws is probably far less than your own, there has to be the moral issue to consider.
Regardless of the subject matter being reused, we have to remember that the author of that work has put a lot of time and effort into it’s creation, so therefore it is only morally correct to credit that person financial
Many people write for monetary gain so it should be the duty of the plagiarist to reimburse the author.
Perhaps the authorities should re name the crime, it should be called ‘copywrong’.
I’m all for great posts but very few people are going to pay for premium content in that format. at least not individual posts. Courses and memberships with tutorials are different. It’s all about making money from the work you do online, which is this is such an important issue.
For many people, plagiarism will cut heavily into their bottom line. Perhaps that means that their business model is wrong. I don’t know. However, I appreciate why many are moving towards protecting their content etc. It is, however, a losing battle.
Kevin
Kevin, I plan to write books in the future, but at this point I have written only posts. I do not claim to be an expert on copyrights, but I have a few thoughts that I would like to share.
There may be a solution that falls between the two extremes such as a “pay for value received” model in which the content (book, video series, etc.) is given away at no charge, but people are encouraged, and perhaps reminded, to voluntarily donate money based on the value of the content they received. Since we know that people can take your content, regardless of whether or not it is “protected,” the best strategy might be to focus on writing great posts.
Even if we assume that the content of a book has been swiped, in violation of a copywright law in the author’s country, the law may be uneforceable or ignored in another country. Furthermore, how would someone know if their content was illegally taken. Furthermore, if content was protect, and if the author knew who took the content, how much time and money would the author have to spend to recover any of the theoretical loss?
Could the author’s time and money be put to a better use? Perhaps the author has an idea for a future post. Perhaps the author needs to spend a little time finishing a partially written post.
Perhaps my thoughts were be different had I written a book.
You’re welcome. Jonathan’s a really nice guy and is always helping people out with this issue.
Nothing will happen to 99.99% of illegal uploaders. I’m still unsure as to how content creators should react to these things. I agree – it’s easy for people who are making a lot of money to say that it’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s different when an illegal upload effects 50% of your income.
I’m keen to launch courses this year and I’m aware that people may try and download the content and upload it elsewhere. There’s ways to prevent this but it means you are not giving as good a product to the user (e.g. by forcing them to view your videos on your desktop rather than offering them a download to view it everywhere).
Kevin
I totally agree with your thoughts on this, Kev. I recently had the opportunity to chase down illegal copies of my brick-and-mortar book on the Net. They were being hosted on a medical school website in Iran, which in turn was hosted by a company in Great Britain. The person who uploaded the file was supposedly from Spain.
I felt like James Bond trying to track this all down. The Iranian site took down the link as soon as I requested they do so, but the person who put the link there is still running around putting it up in other places.
I also agree that Leo can afford to be magnanimous with his stuff, but for the little guys it’s their lifeblood. It would be nice from a moral / philosophical viewpoint to give everything away and have people sitting around downloading everything like the Kopimists, the religion that sees downloading as sacred, but that doesn’t help ME any.
So, thank you for the link to Jonathan’s blog – I’m sure there will be some tips and tricks I can use.