Website for promoting sharing-friendly licenses/Wiki

Please feel free to improve the following draft:

Main subjects

• What's the copyright concept? (A government monopoly)
• What's wrong with a full copyright? (Too restrictive)
• Why should I care? (It's the future of the community)
• Oh, no! That's totally communism! (Freedom isn't communism nor capitalism)
• What about my rights? (Community first. Public long-term benefit is way more important then the private short-term one)
• How can I solve this problem? (Use sharing-friendly licenses like CC's)
• What's the best license? (There is no 'best' license. But freer is better)
• Who has applied this idea? (GNU Project, Wikipedia, over than 100-million photos on Flickr, music websites)
• How can I apply it?
  • On Flickr. (Short version of wikihow instructions)
  • On my blog.
  • ...?
• About us and the license. (GNU Generation, CC-BY-SA, Javascript Trap)

The contents

Home page/screen

Find some suitable free* photos to be used here.

*Any work licensed and any version of cc-by or cc-by-sa.

Share a passion!

Art is the artist's passion, it used to be shared. Sharing gives us the chance to get the best of our human culture. GNU Generation Project tries to explain the importance of sharing in this website.

• The copyright concept.
• The problem of the full copyright system.
• Why this is so important.
• Author rights are still reserved.
• Success stories.
• The solution.
• Applying.
• About us!

What's the copyright concept?

The copyright is a monopoly enforced by the government on certain work for the creator or owner of that work. The copyright system is said to be in the good of the community. 300 years ago, when the concept of copyright was thought of, it prohibited individuals from doing things that they weren't able to do regardless. No individual was able to make as little as ten copies of something, making it almost impossible to seriously violate the law. It only affected wealthy people with expensive printing facilities. So it was fine for us to give up a right we had no use for and to accept such a system. But does this system work that way anymore?

What's wrong with a full copyright?

Several years ago, copyright laws were much less severe than they are today. These copyright laws were created to encourage progress, by providing incentives so businesses would encourage authors and artists to create works by offering them a short monopoly over the work. Then, when the copyright expired, these works would be opened up for everyone to enjoy. Unfortunately, as time went by, corporations began to gain more and more control over the copyright system. Now, in the age of communication, where works can be shared across the world in a heartbeat, copyright has become so powerful that it can be impractical to utilize this method of spreading culture and knowledge. To make matters worse, corporations have started spreading false information that all works are copyrighted, no works can be shared, and copyright owners must utilize all of the provisions of copyright. This couldn't be further from the truth! In essence, copyright is being used to demote progress rather than the original intent: to promote it.

Why should I care?

It's always good to live in a collaborative community where you give and receive freely, where you build upon other people's work and share the amazing results with your friends and neighbors.

The Internet is a wonderfully powerful tool for creating such a community, and we, as a whole, should never try to restrict the power of that tool. The restrictions of the copyright system really only benefit the big media corporations, and we're the victims of this system.

In order to solve this problem, we need to start changing the situation from bottom up so we can all get the advantage of shared knowledge and creativity. Don't we have the right to enjoy our human culture? Doesn't our community, as well as the whole of humanity, have the right to enjoy the progress we as whole have made? What would a good citizen do?

What about my rights?

When you write an article, sing a song or take a photo, you're actually building upon the past, and upon the knowledge you have gleaned from many resources. And when you publish that work, you're no longer the only one who's affected by any restrictions you might think of.

You have rights, but your community should have some rights too. And you should only use restrictions that don't harm that community.

When you support the sharing community, you have some rights over your work, and you'll also have some rights over other works done by community members. You'll save a lot of time by standing on the shoulders of your community, and so will they.

Who has applied this idea?

Many. Here are some examples:

• GNU Project has released several well-written software manuals that is free to use, share and change. Printed copy of these manuals are being sold in the Free Software Foundation shop.
• Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the human history, is free to use, share and change. It was built collaboratively by thousands of volunteers from the free culture community, and it has became very popular and very large.
• Over than One-hundred-million photos on Flickr come with a permission to share.
• Almost 2.5 million photos on Picasa come with a permission to share.
• The Free Software Foundation has a directory of the many software developers who have also followed this model.

How can I solve this problem?

To solve this problem, you're going to need a license. A license is a set of terms that gives certain legal permissions on how someone can and cannot use the work. There are many ready-to-use sharing-friendly licenses that allow you to give the permissions you want to give. It is as easy as saying "this picture/song/article is licensed under X license".

We believe that a sharing-friendly license is the one that at the very least gives the right to share an unmodified version of the work with anybody, so long as it is for non-commercial purposes. There are many licenses that go beyond that, and give the freedom to modify and sell the work with few or no conditions.

Sometimes it's enough merely to give sharing-friendly license to live in a moral collaborative community, but in other cases, the community needs to have some other rights such as modifying or even selling the work.

At the end, it's all up to you. You'll need to see what freedoms the community needs and what restrictions you need and can impose on your work without harming the community.

The following is a simple wizard that can help you decide a good license for your work.

Javascript form

Is your work: (radio input)

• a book
  • Does it explain your personal opinion or experience?

    (If 'yes') Recommend an "ND" license and add the following sentence to the explanation: "We believe that personal-opinion and personal-experience books need to be kept unchanged, so no one can modify them to, accidentally or purposefully, change the meaning.

    (If 'no') continue.

• an article
  • Does it explain your personal opinion or experience? (i.e. weblog)

    (If 'yes') Recommend an "ND" license and add the following sentence to the explanation: "We believe that personal-opinion and personal-experience books need to be kept unchanged, so no one can modify them to, accidentally or purposefully, change the meaning.

    (If 'no') continue.

  • Is it considered a 'reference'?
• a photo
  • Does it define your identity (or someone else's)?

    (If 'yes') Recommend an "CC-BY-NC-ND". The explanation can be: "If the photo can define your identity (or someone else's), we don't think you want it to be modified (so no one is able to insult you using this photo) or sold (so no one can use your photo in their advertising, example)."

    (If 'no') continue.

• a software manual -> Directly recommend GFDL. The explanation can be: "Software manuals are a special case. Not only because they're considered 'educational works', but also because we believe in a large amount of freedom of software and its manuals. They need to be free to use, share and change for both commercial and noncommercial purposes. The commercial use allows software distributors to include the manual in their distribution. This license requires crediting the author(s) and never denying the readers the same freedoms.
• Music
• another kind of work

How can I apply it?

on Flickr

Flickr provides native support for Creative Commons licenses. Here is how you can do it:

1. After choosing the license from How can I solve this problem?, change your default uploading license. This will be the default license on your new works once you upload them.
2. Change all of your old Flickr photos to the Creative Commons license you chose pervasively.

On my blog

Add a footer indicating the license you are using.

FAQ

This page should contain some more detailed informations that any beginners won't necessarily need.

Is there a comparison between licenses that can help me choose?

The following is a table of some licenses that we like, with some usage examples:

About us and the license

We're a sub-project of GNU Generation initiative by the Free Software Foundation. We are all pre-university students that believe in free software and free culture. We ask you to join us in that initiative, where we meet to find and invent ways to support the free software community.

You're free to use all of this website text and images under CC-BY-SA. All Javascripts are under GNU GPL license version 3 or any later version with the following exception:

As a special exception to the GPL, any HTML file which merely makes function calls to this code, and for that purpose includes it by reference shall be deemed a separate work for copyright law purposes. If you modify this code, you may extend this exception to your version of the code, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

Content guidelines

• It should be easy-to-read for both, young and old, beginners and experts.
• It should be 100% correct English. (I, Osama, may not be able to achieve that, so we're going to need some native English speakers).
• It should be translator-friendly. We'll encourage people to translate it.
• It will be licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
• It should focus on ethics as well as the practical advantages.

Technical details

• The website will be a static HTML (not PHP, Python, etc) with Javascript, CSS and images.
• It should be as much attractive as we can make it.
• It should pass W3 validation test.

Designing details

The design:

• needs to be simple and lightweight.
• needs to be original.
• needs to be translator-friendly.
• as whole, needs to be free. (including any 10+ lines Javascript and CSS).

Designers

Click "Edit" and sign below (~~~~) as a designer:

Similar websites to learn from

• Software Liberty
• Get GNU/Linux
• One Billion + You