Copyright or copyleft?

Often, when someone creates content, they do not even consider this question.

In all fairness, people who simply draw a picture, create and share a recipe, write a bit of code (whether for themselves or for a customer or their employer) or write some content in a blog such as this one, or even on Google+ or facebook or some other social media web site, don't think twice about copyright.

Yet rest assured, if you post something to a web site or submit something to a publication or do create some content for an employer, they are most certainly thinking about it.  In fact, it is almost a certainty that you "signed" on some dotted line before that content was published.

If you write a letter to the editor, at some point during the submission, you will be presented with some form of notification that your content may be edited for brevity or for some other reason.  In fact, that notification likely states that the publisher takes ownership of your content even if they don't publish it.  You might not imagine why, but the reason is the publisher may decide to use that content in the future, in one form or another, and they are making sure someone doesn't  sue them for copyright infringement.

Do you even consider copyright when you start making something or do you just do it?

Well, first we actually have to assume that you care.  And you SHOULD care, but you may not.  Even if you don't care, it is good to know that, if you are one of the countries that participated in, and signed, the Berne Convention, then by default, all literary and artistic works that you create are copyright to you.

Here's where things get interesting, though.  Bear with this as the context needs to be set.

Have you ever heard of "negative billing"?  It is a situations where you may sign up for some service, which might actually be free.  Then, sometime in the future you get a bill for some service with that company for something that you do not remember signing up for.  And, you are actually legally obliged to pay the bill.  In the fine print was likely an "opt out" clause which you would have been required to select, so that you would not receive or be billed for that future service or product.  Internet service providers and many content portals may actually have similar clauses that a person has to watch out for.  Even if it is a service you do not have to pay for, this is how a lot of companies get away with spam.  Somewhere, you very likely signed up for the spam, or authorized someone to give your address to spammers.

For example back in the early and mid '90s, companies like AT&T had interesting fine print if you signed up for their internet or portal services.  If you put any content on their portal, they owned it.  It was part of their sign on contract.  And, this was up for discussion and was never really clear, if you signed on with AT&T as your internet service provider, it was questionable whether AT&T owned the rights to all the content contained within the data that you sent or received.  Many people were not aware of that and others just didn't care.

The point is, AT&T then had the right to do anything with any of the content that was posted on their web portal.  Meaning that they could re-print or publish your content, verbatim or edited, in anything from advertising to PR material, etc, without your permission, whether it was in context or not.

What does that have to do with choosing copyright or copyleft?

Well, if a person really doesn't care about such fine print, then they really can't care if someone else uses their content verbatim or edited in a context that the content creator didn't mean.  Perhaps you stated an opinion about a political party and then that political party used that comment out of context in their campaign material?  Or you find some other offensive use of your words or art?

So it is important that you know your content is, in fact, copyright if you are a citizen of a Berne Convention country.  Unless you have read the fine print and your content remains yours, post away.  If you really would like your content to be re-used, then you have to implicitly state that your content is either public domain, or that you allow permission of any others to use your works for their own purposes.

THAT, is when you should consider copyleft.  Some form of Creative Commons license is useful if you wish to retain some control over how your work is used.  In Canada, even if we sign over copyright, we still retain moral rights (berne convention article 6bis).  In Canada, it is possible to waive your moral rights, but you DO implicitly have them, otherwise, so be aware of that when you sign over economic rights, it would be part of that clause.  But that's not the case in all participating countries.  So by using copyleft, you give certain permissions, while still maintaining copyright, so that if your work is used in a way that you dislike, you may actually have legal grounds to repeal your work from the offending material or sue in court.

Before you sign up for a web service on which you might publish your content, be sure to read the fine print.  You may have signed away your rights without even knowing it.  And if you are sharing knowledge that you want others to be able to use and share as is, then you really should ensure that you have included a proper copyleft license so that they legally can.