Change.gov joins the Creative Commons movement:
Toward a 21st century government
President-elect Obama has championed the creation of a more open, transparent, and participatory government. To that end, Change.gov adopted a new copyright policy this weekend. In an effort to create a vibrant and open public conversation about the Obama-Biden Transition Project, all website content now falls under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
More here
This news comes right as I’m in the middle of Sound Unbound and really feeling the message that the more ways you can find to actively get your idea into the world, the better chance it has of actually becoming concrete. You would think this was simple enough and that poets would be the first ones behind this concept since
a) the vast majority of poets I know make more revenue from live readings/seminars/workshops than they do from the sales of their text
b) the art is based on the distribution of idea in an easily memorized structure
but then you have the case of British Poet Wendy Cope that declared You like my poems? So pay for them.
Cope makes a few good points but then fails to realize my other point
c) poets love to have their work taught
and that means most of the time a poem is photocopied out of a book or anthology (a No-No if you are following © down to the letter). I am sure Ms Cope can also make this demand: Want to teach one of my poems? Buy the whole damn book. But I do respect her stance and so you won’t find any of her work on this site.
Quick side note: If I ever do post a poem, MP3, or video that highlights you and you don’t want it displayed, lemme know and I’ll take it down. It’s already happened once, I was asked courteously, and so the media was deleted. Simple as that.
Back to sharing poetry: My own venture into gift economy has been working out pretty well with three used novels, one perfect bound chapbook, a bootleg John Legend CD, and a brand new hip-hop poetry CD to show for my efforts. I’m expecting a couple of more CDs and what has been described as a very rare poetry chapbook soon, but the coolness is being able to share the work with folks while still feeling like my poems are valued. Word.