[cc-community] Help me decide on a license

Jim Baker frstprin at mninter.net
Mon Dec 10 22:40:15 EST 2007


Michael shows a great deal of courage and compassion in completing and 
providing his work to help others. He also seems very talented and 
hopefully is deriving some income from his voluminous efforts.
	jim b.
On Dec 8, 2007, at 12:30 AM, Michael David Crawford wrote:

> 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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>
>
It takes 20 years of hard work to become an overnight success."
--Diana Rankin,
  writer and public speaker



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