If I decide to self-publish a book what happens to the copyright? Is there a way to prevent others from claiming copyrights for a book published autonomously? Are there OS licenses specifically tuned for books?
When it comes to creative work, Creative Commons is the way to go. I know a guy who exclusively releases music under the Creative Commons license.
Here’s a “Chooser” wizard, that asks you some questions and then suggests a suitable CC license for you.
Fun fact KGWZ released one of their albums completly free (i guess public domain) and encourage you to play with it as much as you want :)
Here’s a careful reminder that “public domain” is not a worldwide thing ^^; in fact, very few countries have a public domain.
In some cases, if you try to publish something as “public domain” from a certain country, it is invalid - because their judiciary does not define public domain as anything.
It maybe considered public domain, until you die and someone wants that copyright, in which case the family takes precedent over the estate - full stop.
There’s a difference between countries that have common law (US and UK) and those that have civil law (the Nordics), so yeah.
But CC is valid license pretty much everywhere, with a few exceptions.
https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/
You probably want the SA (share-alike) or NC-SA (non-commercial share-alike) but take a look and decide what suits you best.
From https://creativecommons.org/faq/#do-i-have-to-provide-my-name-can-i-ask-that-my-name-be-removed :
Do I have to provide my name? Can I ask that my name be removed?
As a licensor, you may choose to receive under any name that you wish, such as a pseudonym or pen name, or you may choose not to be credited by name at all, and to publish anonymously. You do not have to be credited under your legal name. Most jurisdictions permit this, but you should check to be sure this is valid in your jurisdiction.
Don’t go NC. Authors should be able to sell their work (and derivates too)
The original author could sell their work anyway.
the author can still sell the work, the NC prevents other people from profiting off of it without explicit permission (this does not prevent exemptions, work can still be sold under cc-by-sa as an exemption)
It’s useful as it makes it harder for AI to use it. Derivates can still reach out to ask to be allowed to sell it
We shouldn’t throw humans under the bus just to thwart AI. This is not the way.
I’m fine with making people email me if they want to sell derivatives of a creative work tho
And if you’re dead or incarcerated or otherwise uncontactable?
Then I won’t be suing for copyright infringement
copyright will eventually expire after your death
and cc nc does not prevent derivatives, just profiting off of them without explicit permission, which is not that big of a deal
It is a big deal! Its the difference between starving and not
CC BY-SA
or CC BY-NC-SA (the non-commercial-use-only one)
No, not NC. People should be able to feed themselves for their work
With a NC license, the author still can sell the work and make money. It’s just that other people can’t.
Yes. And other people should be able to use other people’s work to make derivative works to feed themselves
I think that’s best left up to the author. Sometimes someone might prefer that their art stay independent of capitalism. I think that is a respectable position.
You’re not a capitalist because you need to buy food
But selling other peoples’ labor would introduce it to the capitalist system. Not saying that makes you a capitalist. Just saying some people might want to keep their art out of that system.
That is entirely up to the author who is creating the original work. They set the license and people can choose whether or not they want to work with the license. If i wanted to use someone else’s work for commercial purposes then i would just ignore any works released under a NC license. I’m not entitled to someone else’s work just because i need to eat
Assholes choose not to copyleft. Assholes choose NC licensees too
RMS’s biography “Free as in Freedom” seems to be under the GNU Free Documentation License, incase that’s anything to go by.
If you write something, you own the copyright, period. There’s no registration process or anything like that. If you made it, it’s yours, legally. And the only process involved to exercise the rights would just be proving that you’re actually the one who made it.
Of course, none of that makes it certain that no one will claim it as their own or use it for something you don’t want. As a general rule, just assume that anything you don’t want used in a way you don’t like simply shouldn’t be put out into the public at all, regardless of what kind of license you package with it. If you’re an average person and not a billionaire good luck exercising any kind of legal rights for intangible stuff like written words.
It is generally a good idea to include with anything you put out there some kind of license, which could be as simple as a .txt file that says “Made by [name], free to use for xyz purposes with abc caveats”
For a book stuff like that can go into the first or last couple pages that usually include all sorts of random boring information and publisher credits and whatnot
You do have to prove you wrote it. Nothing does this better than owning the credentials to an account with your name and posting it publicly on GitHub, Internet Archive, or similar
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I hope that you will never publish a book.
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