It’s good to think about this, though most of the value probably comes from the small number of most valuable works, of course. For most people and works, it’s probably a trivial problem.
I’m not sure that I agree that
On the other hand, verbatim copying may not be as valuable as it used to be, because one can simply link to your work instead of copying it to another URL, but this runs into the problem of link rot. At the same time, some EA-related works have been published commercially and likely benefit from aspects of traditional copyright, at least in the short term.
A number of valuable things, like compiling copyrighted works into an anthology or preparing other derivative works, can be prevented by copyright.
EAs with influential writings should definitely pay attention to their copyrights during estate planning, to avoid the Orphan Works problem. It may also behoove Forum admins to think about having the site TOU to have some explicit licensing language to make preservation of EA Forum posts easier.
I generally use perma.cc in my own academic writings to prevent linkrot. I assume some people also archive various EA sites; if not, somebody should!
Thanks for your response! Btw, the perma.cc link is broken—you need to add the “https://” prefix or else browsers will interpret it as a relative path.
By “explicit licensing language to make preservation of EA Forum posts easier,” do you mean some kind of limited license to copy content for archival purposes, or a more general license that applies automatically to forum content?
If the latter, a good alternative to compelling EA Forum users to license their posts (which many users might not be comfortable with) is to add a feature allowing users to voluntarily tag their posts with a Creative Commons license of their choice, like Medium has.
It’s good to think about this, though most of the value probably comes from the small number of most valuable works, of course. For most people and works, it’s probably a trivial problem.
I’m not sure that I agree that
A number of valuable things, like compiling copyrighted works into an anthology or preparing other derivative works, can be prevented by copyright.
EAs with influential writings should definitely pay attention to their copyrights during estate planning, to avoid the Orphan Works problem. It may also behoove Forum admins to think about having the site TOU to have some explicit licensing language to make preservation of EA Forum posts easier.
I generally use perma.cc in my own academic writings to prevent linkrot. I assume some people also archive various EA sites; if not, somebody should!
Thanks for your response! Btw, the perma.cc link is broken—you need to add the “https://” prefix or else browsers will interpret it as a relative path.
Fixed, thanks!
By “explicit licensing language to make preservation of EA Forum posts easier,” do you mean some kind of limited license to copy content for archival purposes, or a more general license that applies automatically to forum content?
If the latter, a good alternative to compelling EA Forum users to license their posts (which many users might not be comfortable with) is to add a feature allowing users to voluntarily tag their posts with a Creative Commons license of their choice, like Medium has.