Battleangel | Personal

As you may have noticed I’ve slapped Creative Commons licensing texts and badges onto Battleangel and Silent-Nation. The reasoning being fairly straightforward. One cannot be sloppy these days. One needs to be wary of mercantile ‘ends’ and ‘means’. To specify even everyday discourse in order not to be misused or besieged.

Creative Commons is a strong indication where one’s loyalties lie. And it enables one to specifically allow others to copy, use and be inspired by creative content. And at the same time not open it up as public domain and allow it to drift into the hands of those that use it for commercial purposes. That is the central problem here and the irony of it all, there isn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that information, art, culture can be set free as long as there are still those that would use the opportunity to horde and profit from it. Hence Creative Commons. To create a new sphere, a shadow of the mercantile world, modelled in its image and untouchable by its darkness.

That is what I mean by mercantile ‘ends’. I know, it is far fetched that anything on this site could be of commercial value. It is more of a statement of course but still …

There is also the issue of mercantile ‘means’, as in not profiting from the content itself but using commercial instruments to get to someone. For example specifically obtaining unlicensed content, slapping a license of your own on it and using it to effectively entangle and even shut the original source down. Sounds paranoid? Maybe it is. But if I have learned anything it is to expect the unexpected. There is no way to foresee what dishonorable people can and will do and this is just a silly precaution.