On Copylefting Your Text?

eclectric asks: "This subject has been mentioned in passing in a few slashdot comments in recent weeks, but I for one would like to find more information on the subject of copylefting text. I've seen some licenses, including the GNU Free Documentation License and the Open Content License, but both of them seem limited to software documentation and academic papers, respectively. Is one of these the path to take, or does the creative world need a new 'copyleft' to combat the forces of evil, namely the DMCA. What kind of steps have other authors taken, including just putting their works in the public domain, to insure that their works remain free of the limitations of US and International copyright law."

Comments

Re:Why bother?

[Phork]

you seem to be misundertsanding one of the key things about free(libre) software, and these other new free media liscenses that work to the same effect. When you create a creatibve work, you are automatically assigned the copyright to that work. Having this copyright allows you to controll how your work is distributed. It allows you the right to choose to place it under the GPL, and because you hold the copyright on that work someone else cannot just take it and decide to distribute it under some other liscense. Copyleft is not the opposite of copyright. Public Domain is approxemitly the opposite of copyright.