I have had occasion recently to address a copyright issue, when one of my papers turned up on an Estonian website and then many iterations of it around the web all linked back to the Estonian one, and not to my original on my site. While I’m not precious about my work, and am quite happy to see the text appear on Wikipedia, my objection was to the further links that did not come my way.<\/p>\n
I was able to amend the link on Wikipedia, but other derivative sites clearly had old versions. After writing a series of emails pointing out the error of their ways, I found the major sites like Wikipedia and Answers.com responded within hours by amending the link to reflect the true copyright owner – so congratulations to those sites. Others seem to stream the information to seemingly orphan pages devoid of any email contact points, and to those I wrote to the top level domain operator pending further action.<\/p>\n
But it did also get me thinking about the concept of copyright, and of its variations aimed at allowing people to take something in the public arena and develop it collectively with anyone who stops by. This broadly, is the concept of copyleft<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Then there is a kind of middle ground – a creative commons licence<\/strong><\/a>, in which copyright is still retained, while allowing free downloads and use of the material. In a sense, that is the spirit in which my band site offers its MP3 downloads – you can download for free and enjoy as many times as you like, as long as you attribute the music to Full Circle Band, and not claim it as your own.<\/p>\n![\"CopyLeft\"](\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/copyleft.jpg\")
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![\"Creative](\"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/creativecommons.jpg\")
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