4 ms·

Merlin Mann is one of the people whose tweets were used without permission. He detailed his perspective in three blog posts: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/5

by macrael 17y ago

Merlin Mann is one of the people whose tweets were used without permission. He detailed his perspective in three blog posts: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/508615417/regret http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/508615417/regret http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511063886/tweets-are-not-nothing http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511063886/tweets-are-not-no... http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511314674/dollar-sign-painters http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511314674/dollar-sign-paint... This is a mann who gives away most of his life's work. He loves fair use and believes in sharing. However, when doing so, he believes that he has control over what of his work is shared and under what terms. Publishing a book and charging money for other people's work without their permission is emphatically not fair use. Anyway, he writes well on the subject, I would recommend reading his perspective because he is someone who makes a living giving away most of his work and had thought a lot about what that means.

decode 17y ago
You're right, his perspective is fascinating for several reasons: 1) He makes the argument that he has some natural right to control the entirety of his creative output. In the US (where he lives), this is not true, it has never been true, and we can all hope it will never be true. This statement, as an example, is complete nonsense: "I control every fucking syllable of anything I’ve ever done, regardless of whether I sell it or not." He has the copyright to some of the the work he's done, which is a completely different (and much less powerful) animal. 2) Except for the parts about him giving away most of his work, his posts could have been written by the PR departments of the RIAA or MPAA. He repeatedly talks about stealing, and the poor artist being hurt by the pirates, when no theft happened. Why doesn't he just talk about copyright infringement? 3) He talks about fair use and licensing, but the salient point is that he likely never had copyright on the tweets in the first place. If something is in the public domain, fair use and licensing never come into play.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  You're picking it apart but you seem to have missed his point entirely. It's not about money or even having the trivial words taken. It's about being attached to something that you aren't actually attached to, or more specifically, not having control over what you and the work you've done are attached to. See, that's the bothersome thing. As he writes: Because when some dick weed uses and sells my stuff without permission, I seldom lose anything more than theoretical (non-)money from a junk project that’ll be forgotten in a month or two. Whatever. Happens every day. Don’t care. Nope. But. When somebody creates the indelible impression that I relinquished control of my work in the service of that complete piece of shit when I did not? Well. That, to use an old publishing term, is fucking bullshit. This is exactly how I feel when I see "blog comments" that are actually just scraped from comments on other sites (like HN). It's not that I want compensation at all: I just don't want my name and words attached to something I had nothing to do with, and it's infuriating that there are so many people out there who feel entitled to do exactly that just because I happen to have put some words on the internet without asking for money.

by macrael 17y ago

decode 17y ago

You're right, his perspective is fascinating for several reasons: 1) He makes the argument that he has some natural right to control the entirety of his creative output. In the US (where he lives), this is not true, it has never been true, and we can all hope it will never be true. This statement, as an example, is complete nonsense: "I control every fucking syllable of anything I’ve ever done, regardless of whether I sell it or not." He has the copyright to some of the the work he's done, which is a completely different (and much less powerful) animal. 2) Except for the parts about him giving away most of his work, his posts could have been written by the PR departments of the RIAA or MPAA. He repeatedly talks about stealing, and the poor artist being hurt by the pirates, when no theft happened. Why doesn't he just talk about copyright infringement? 3) He talks about fair use and licensing, but the salient point is that he likely never had copyright on the tweets in the first place. If something is in the public domain, fair use and licensing never come into play.

GHFigs 17y ago
You're picking it apart but you seem to have missed his point entirely. It's not about money or even having the trivial words taken. It's about being attached to something that you aren't actually attached to, or more specifically, not having control over what you and the work you've done are attached to. See, that's the bothersome thing. As he writes: Because when some dick weed uses and sells my stuff without permission, I seldom lose anything more than theoretical (non-)money from a junk project that’ll be forgotten in a month or two. Whatever. Happens every day. Don’t care. Nope. But. When somebody creates the indelible impression that I relinquished control of my work in the service of that complete piece of shit when I did not? Well. That, to use an old publishing term, is fucking bullshit. This is exactly how I feel when I see "blog comments" that are actually just scraped from comments on other sites (like HN). It's not that I want compensation at all: I just don't want my name and words attached to something I had nothing to do with, and it's infuriating that there are so many people out there who feel entitled to do exactly that just because I happen to have put some words on the internet without asking for money.