Sydney Poetry

A social site for poets in Sydney.

Cordite Creative Commons Issue

Having put the undead to rest, Cordite next turns its attention to licensing! With the forthcoming 33rd issue, to be edited by Alison Croggon, Cordite seeks work licensed under the Creative Commons.

Says their call for submissions:

With this issue, for the first time, we will be seeking to publish contributors’ works under a creative commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike) license, meaning that we (and others) will be free to remix these works.

[It's] a chance for us to ask some pertinent questions about poetry in the digital world.

Contributors are invited to submit on any theme (could this be the end, at last, of themes – ok, probably not).

The Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (my own personal favourite) means others can reuse and modify an author's work, provided they:

credit the author(s) whose works are used (attribution),
don't make any money out of it (noncommercial), and
publish their own work under the same license (share alike).

Why would a writer do this at all? This kind of licensing encourages respectful collaboration amongst artists, through sampling, reuse and reinvention. It acknowledges that the conventional copyright is broken and limiting, and that, to paraphrase Commons proponent Lawrence Lessig, the future need not be captive to the past.

See creativecommons.org and Wikipedia for more information about this and other licensing arrangements, which are often indicated by the followng snazzy icons.