[cc-community] Help me decide on a license

Michael David Crawford michael at geometricvisions.com
Sat Dec 8 01:30:25 EST 2007


I'm considering placing my "Magnum Opus" under a Creative Commons 
license, but I haven't decided which one.  Presently it is All Rights 
Reserved, and has been that way since I published it in 2003.

It's an essay on my website.  It's a very long one though - fifty pages 
in hardcopy form - so I'm also planning to provide PDF versions in both 
US Letter and A4 formats for easy printing.  Quite a few people have 
told me that it's hard to read such a long piece on a computer screen.

The two licenses I'm considering are:

   Attribution-No Derivative Works
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/

   Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

I know what would be the Right license to choose, but I am reluctant.  I 
*have* placed the first of these licenses on quite a few of my other 
essays without anything happening that I object to though.

I won't allow derivative works because the piece is a very personal 
story, and expresses some very deeply-held personal opinions.  It is:

    Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
    http://www.geometricvisions.com/Madness/schizoaffective-disorder/

That's me in the picture, sitting in the chair.

I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.  It's a very serious, 
poorly understood and difficult to treat mental illness.  It's just like 
having schizophrenia and manic depression *at the same time*.  The 
symptoms include visual and auditory hallucinations, paranoia and other 
delusions, depression which can be suicidal, and a profoundly euphoric 
state called mania.

If it weren't for decades of psychotherapy and a daily regimen of 
psychotropic medications I would be As Mad As A Hatter, as evidenced by 
this by-nd piece:

     My Deepest Fear
     http://www.vancouverdiaries.com/thought-police.html

I have a lot of reason to believe that writing Living with 
Schizoaffective Disorder essay was the best thing I have done in my 
entire life, and may well in the end be the best thing I will have ever 
done.

It's been in the top ten at Google for "schizoaffective disorder" since 
the Spring of 2003, and was featured in three front-page installments at 
Kuro5hin.  As a result I've received *thousands* of grateful emails from 
readers - the mentally ill, their loved ones, and the mental health 
professionals who treat people like me.

Overwhelmingly I am told that my essay is the only material they've been 
able to find that helps the reader understand what schizoaffective 
disorder is really *like*.  All the other websites just have terse 
clinical descriptions.  Even psychiatrist, psychotherapists and nurses 
tell me that it's helped them to understand their patients better.

Quite a few people have recognized themselves in my writing and sought 
treatment as a result.  Several people stepped back from the brink of 
suicide after reading it.  Several grieving parents wrote to tell me 
that it helped them understand why their children actually did commit 
suicide.

Now, my essay is free-as-in-beer on the web, where anyone can read it, 
but I know that many who would benefit from it either don't know how to 
use computers, web browsers or search engines.  It would never occur to 
many people to even look.

Many of those who need to read it the most are sadly unaware that they 
are even mentally ill - a phenomenon called "anosognosia" prevents many 
of the mentally ill from recognizing their delusions, even when others 
urge them to seek treatment.

So the Right Thing to do would be for me to allow commercial 
reproduction.  One such use I would have no problem with would be for 
mental health organizations to sell it as a fund-raiser.  I was a member 
of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Nova Scotia, and I would be 
very happy if they were to sell it.

What I would have a problem with would be for a traditional book 
publisher to make a best-seller out of it and not give me a cut of the 
profits.

The important difference, in my case, seems to be whether the work is 
sold to truly benefit the mentally ill, or sold merely in a cynical 
effort to make a buck.

What arguments can you make?

Another reason this is important is that I'm preparing to publish a 
collection of all my essays on mental illness at Lulu 
(http://www.lulu.com/).  Lulu is a print-on-demand self-publishing 
service.  Authors upload PDFs of their books, then Lulu prints just one 
copy for each order.

Most of my other essays are already under the by-nd license; I'm 
considering placing the whole book under a Creative Commons license, but 
need to settle the license terms for each of the as-yet unlicensed 
essays that will be included.

The whole lot of my writing on mental illness can be found at:

http://www.geometricvisions.com/mental-illness/

You may not be surprised to find that one of them is called "Writing as 
a Symptom of Mental Illness"; one of the things my illness does to me is 
to make me write compulsively.  So there's a lot of material at the 
above link!

Thanks for your help,

Michael David Crawford
michael at geometricvisions.com
http://www.geometricvisions.com/

    Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.


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