Steal my content, please!
That's the title of a post from Robert Scoble last week. He was responding to Susan Mernit's report that Lane Hartwell was so pissed with people stealing her photographs that she decided to take her photos out of the public eye.
After offering up a way to watermark the photos and keep them online, Scoble says he's just the opposite.
I WANT YOU to steal my content. In fact, next year I’m going to do stuff to make all my content available via Creative Commons license so you can use it whereever and whenever, including my video shows. I’d like a credit, yes, but don’t demand it. I’d rather just add to the human experience and if that means that other people make money off of my work, so be it.
I’ve found that the more I give away my content, the more magical stuff happens to me anyway and if that means my photos or writings or videos get used in some way that I don’t really like, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Lane obviously is not.
Plus, today I have a little less competition from Lane, who was a great photographer but who’s work will be hard to discover now.
I'm right there with Scoble. And you lawyers should be wanting people stealing your blog content. The more it's stolen by blockquote, reference and link, the easier for the world to discover you. And isn't that what's it all about, getting known for our expertise?
Want further evidence that you want people stealing your content? Scoble cites the New York Times whose traffic has taken off since removing its subscription pay wall in September.
As Scoble says, '...[W]hen you try to hold onto your content too tightly fewer people are able to find it.'
There is a pretty easy way to open up your content to everyone. Slap a Creative Commons license on your blog and let 'em rip (literally). There are 6 licenses to choose from and with the introduction of the CC+ and CC0 protocols, there is even more scope to license your content under a CC license and still either profit off it (using the CC+ protocol) or release it to the public domain in a trusted environment (CC0) would be handy here.
Great idea Paul, want to take a stab on a guest post here on what you would suggest lawyers do on creative commons on their blog. I could ask Cathy Kirkman to do the same from her Silicon Valley Media Blog. Need not be anything too long.