This is an 'action' article.
The words on this page are only the tip of the iceberg... the rest of the article is embedded in my website, a very simple change in the wording of my Intro page, where people can more easily read them. The basic idea, as expressed in the Title, has been forming for a long time.
When I came on-line and set up my website in March 2000, I began visiting a lot of artist's websites. One of the things that I saw on many of these sites, was what I considered to be an overly proctective attitude on the part of many artists, toward their on-line images. When I designed my own website, I decided to put a copyright notice at the bottom of every page, but not to make a big deal about it. I also posted a brief message on my Intro Page:
"This website and all of its contents are my intellectual property, and protected by copyright. Anyone who wishes has my permission to download copies of images, essays or papers for personal use and reference. Before doing so, please read the section in the 'Papers' link titled 'Notice of Copyright/ Permission to Download."
Then I went back to painting.
But over the years, I continued to observe what I increasingly began to consider lunatic behaviour, on the part of artists and painters... threatening copyright notices, small blurry images, and worst of all, images with 'Sample' and 'Do Not Copy' and similar nonsense, written across the images, defacing them... all in the name of protecting their work from copyright infringement.
Not only does such defacement stop legitimate potential customers from seeing the work, but also (and I don't understand how the 'artists' who do this to their images can be blind to the fact), the message their work sends with 'Do Not Copy' written in fat, ugly letters across it, is entirely different than the message it was probably intended to send, when it was painted.
When I became interested in programming a couple years later, I was unable to afford the most well known tools, developed my Microsoft. One thing lead to another, and I discovered the 'Open Source' movement... a bunch of computer geeks who developed software tools, which they then either distributed for free, or for a very affordable amount. Whether the compiled software is freely distributed or sold, though, the source code for it is always freely available... hence, 'Open Source'.
Looking to the pure sciences, I saw the same strategy... scientists publish their findings to the entire scientific community (the entire world, in fact), so that science can continue to efficiently advance. There are certain entities in the scientific community who will, just as Microsoft is doing in the computer sciences, attempt to restrict the free distribution of knowledge, to fatten their own wallets.
Looking to the fine visual arts... my field... I have to ask myself, which path do I intend to follow... the 'Do Not Copy' path, spending more time, effort and worry attempting to defend my Web images against 'theft', or the path of science and open source computing?
As of today, the 'Permission to Copy' statement on the Intro Page of my website has been slightly amended, to tell visitors that if they want, not only do they have permission to grab free copies of my Web images, but also, the link to a freely distributed screen saver/ slide show program, for displaying the images on their computer. Instead of worrying about protecting my web images from 'theft', I will encourage their distribution. After all, I will still have the paintings themselves, and the 'print' copy rights, to earn a living from. The web images are the equivalent of the 'source code' in computing, and the scientific knowledge in the pure sciences, that are freely distributed by their respective authors.
This is... heh... hardly an original idea... just a good one.