[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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