Different types of creative work may deserve a different treatment. (The same people who want copyright protection reduced to 5 years max probably haven't thought through the GPL implications!)
Imagine you wrote a truly great short story. Straight up copyright might be optimal. It'll get copied around regardless. Encouraging derivative works probably doesn't buy you much. And CC-BY seems as low as you'd want to go. Anything less, and Hollywood just gobbles it up and nobody sees your name on the poster. This goes against your strategy of "getting known by getting copied."
Also, times change. Musicians who license songs CC-BY-NC are free options in the Vimeo music service that offers background tracks to video creators. Meanwhile, old-school artists are one click away from actually getting paid. And public domain music seems deeply buried in the archive.org ghetto. So choose carefully, grasshopper.
License choice is part of modern web marketing. But it's a short-term bump and nobody knows the long-term effects. Also: if the most interesting part of your art is the license, you're doing it wrong.
The same people who want copyright protection reduced to 5 years max probably haven't thought through the GPL implications!
Many have, including RMS himself:
I could support a law that would make GPL-covered software's source code available in the public domain after 5 years, provided it has the same effect on proprietary software's source code. After all, copyleft is a means to an end (users' freedom), not an end in itself. And I'd rather not be an advocate for a stronger copyright.
So I proposed that the Pirate Party platform require proprietary software's source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released. The escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after 5 years. Rather than making free software an official exception to the 5-year copyright rule, this would eliminate proprietary software's unofficial exception. Either way, the result is fair.
Good points. I should addresses some of these concern in the future.
However, people tend to attribute you anyway, 99% of the time, in my experience. I got one guy who published a book on amazon and he attributed my work anyway, even though it was copyrighted to the max. One guy just attributed the author, but not the zine. I didn't find anybody who doesn't attribute my content in some way, at least not yet.
The other reasons why I make my stuff public domain is that I want to maximize the usefulness of my work as well ethical reasons. However, these are not explored in the article. Maybe I shouldn't have neglect those dimensions, but I am not quite sure yet.
Imagine you wrote a truly great short story. Straight up copyright might be optimal. It'll get copied around regardless. Encouraging derivative works probably doesn't buy you much. And CC-BY seems as low as you'd want to go. Anything less, and Hollywood just gobbles it up and nobody sees your name on the poster. This goes against your strategy of "getting known by getting copied."
Also, times change. Musicians who license songs CC-BY-NC are free options in the Vimeo music service that offers background tracks to video creators. Meanwhile, old-school artists are one click away from actually getting paid. And public domain music seems deeply buried in the archive.org ghetto. So choose carefully, grasshopper.
License choice is part of modern web marketing. But it's a short-term bump and nobody knows the long-term effects. Also: if the most interesting part of your art is the license, you're doing it wrong.