There’s a weird thing that happens with the web. I write these words into my happy little netbook, hit the publish button, and my words are sent in the form of ones and zeroes up to wordpress, who in turn puts them on a website in my name. A while later a server will crawl my webpage, and these very same words will be disseminated across the web. They’re the same words I’ve written, but they’ve completed changed. They’re not on my comptuer, and they’re not on wordpress’ server. They’re now on Google’s server, or maybe Microsoft’s servers. Not to mention the dozens of intermediate places they’ve been.
Now you the reader have come to visit. You may have found this site because I know you personally, and you saw a link I posted. You may have come because you were searching for bizarre kitty hentai and those keywords accidentally routed you here. You may have come because someone decided this page was worth stumbling upon. Or maybe it was dugg. I dunno.
These words, then, have been transmitted to you probably twice, from whatever source you used to get here, and again from wordpress. They’re still my words, heading to you.
Now, from a technological point of view, this is awesome. This is the world we want, where all information is able to reach all people who want to see it. These words will be read by people I’ve never met, people I may not ever know. They may be laughed at by people who disagree or reposted by those who do. They’re circle the globe over and over again in the form of ones and zeroes. And all will be good.
But from an ownership standpoint, is this a good thing? These are my words. They do not belong to google, wordpress, yahoo, microsoft, digg, stumble-upon, or any of those businesses. Those business have, by disseminating my words across the globe performed a service and they make money off of that service. Should I bill them? I’m not making money off this blog. It seems wrong that they are.
But it’s not. Not really.
See, Google indexes this website, and performs a service for me in the way it gives me exposure. I perform a service for them by giving them another small bit of text to add to their massive database . They make money off the service, not the words. They make money not by having the idea, but by connecting the people who seek the idea with the people who do have the ideas. That is why they exist.
The modern web needs that level of interconnectivity to function. You need to be able to find what you’re looking for. The web lives on information, and dies with censorship.
Okay, but let’s take this from a different angle. I write a short story. I have several on here already. These are little flash fiction stories, each one about 500 words or so. But here I am with my short story. Google indexes it and has it on their search engine. Someone comes and reads that story.
But maybe they read it from google cache as opposed to coming to my website. Google has now kept me from gaining a reader. Maybe. The story still has my name (or pseudonym, anyways) on it. Google isn’t claiming authorship, and they’re not granting rights I haven’t already granted implicitly when I posted this post. They’re regurgitating my short story, not claiming it as their own.
I have no problem with that.
So what do I have a problem with?
Let’s see…
1. If I sell something for money, I’d appreciate being paid for it.
2. If I write something, I’d appreciate getting credit.
3. If I didn’t write something, I don”t want credit.
4. If something has my name on it, it should come from me, and should not be rewritten.
… So if copyright protection could do that for me, I’d be happy. But modern copyright law is a convoluted mess of over a hundred years of additions, invalidations, and modifications. Modern copyright doesn’t care about fair use, and those who most quickly scream about their copyrights are seeking only one thing… money.
Money is pretty nice. Someday I’d like to be paid for my work. However, if the reason I was writing was to get rich, I’d spend more time studying Dan Brown and less time trying to cram a fantasy world and a noir world together. I do this because it’s interesting to me, and fun to me.
I don’t mind Google, Microsoft, or whomever using my words in this fashion. I don’t mind blogs quoting some or all of this post in their blogs (as long as I’m credited. Links are lovely and free!). I don’t mind the fact that this is on the internet, and may inevitably show up printed out and tacked to a bulletin board of a coffee shop in Atlanta (send me a pic if that happens, btw). This is the world we live in now. I’m offering these words for free. If in doing whatever you’re doing on the net, you need to make some small use of my work, then great! I may return the favor sometime. 🙂
So I guess, to sum up, I just want to say that if you read something you agree with, or enjoy on my blog, please share it around. Make sure I still get credit, and when I do post something for sale, consider buying it. I think I’ll be happy with that.
By the way, you people are totally sexy. Every single one of you.
Think about that.
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