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Do it: No rights reserved
Published on 12/04/08
by Zac Echola
There’s been complaining about conversation leaving the blogosphere for a few weeks. I’ve written my thoughts here, but I fear bloggers have been falling back to old media ways, especially bloggers who try to make a living as conversationalists.
Let’s move on from ridiculous statements like these: “If they ever pull my feed and use it there, they can expect to get hit with a DMCA take-down notice.” Syndication is a good thing for your brand in any form. Who cares whether the conversation happens at your blog, some other blog in response to you or at a water cooler in a lonely New Jersey office park?
I’m releasing all rights to my content to the public domain.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll notice that this is a logical conclusion. I’m a Cluetrainer; Conversations happen everywhere, but technology lets us see the scale of that conversation that we, as mass media, didn’t previously have access to. I’m a big proponent of Information Architects‘ idea that our content is our brand.
Zenhabits did this not too long ago, so in the spirit of public domain, here’s what Leo had to say:
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.
Credit and payment
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.
My sentiments exactly. If you want to make money off my content here, fine. I don’t care. I care less about intellectual property and more about intellect and the free flow of ideas. If you want to talk about my posts elsewhere, go for it. I’m glad for it.
Only the stuff that is mine is public domain, obviously. Where noted, other’s content isn’t under public domain (duh). The site template belongs to iA.
The end. Or is it?
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Tags: fourth estate is a conversation, information wants to be free