uncopyright

Like other pioneers of this movement, I have decided to uncopyright all the material on this website, and every other website with which I have affiliations. All of the content that I have generated on this site is yours to redistribute however you like.

When I first created my website, I was moving from Vermont back to Philadelphia and wanted to have a portfolio of pictures for some of my work for when it came time to search for a new job (yes, I had no job prospects when I moved back here!) Now, maybe I am making some assumptions, but building wheelchair accessible tree houses and traditional timberframes doesn’t really speak to the populace of the Delaware Valley. I wanted some pictures to tell the full story.

Thus, with absolutely no knowledge of HTML, CSS, javascript, or MySQL, I started building a website. At the bottom of the page, I took some cues from other people who had built online portfolios: I put a little © symbol at the bottom to make my website seem “official.”

What is a copyright, anyway? I will spare you the long explanation as I am assuming if you have reached this small corner of the internet, then you probably have mastered the art of using a search engine. Generally speaking, a copyright acts as a protection of intellectual property. Copyright laws, under the guise of protecting the artist, normally only protect the profits of a corporation or larger organization that actually owns the intellectual property of the artist. Since I am not in the business of making profits from my renovation pictures or professional works (after I have been paid for the physical work), there is no need for copyrighting.

In fact, I believe that the redistribution of my pictures, stories, and calculators will only serve me. Perhaps I am naïve, but I see no way that releasing all copyrights could ever hurt me. At the very least, it shows good faith in the world and could turn out to be a good way to network.

Content builds. Knowledge bases cannot exist without steady accumulation of valued information. Nothing that I have done in my life would have been possible without me taking something from others. Rather than taking the protectionist route of consuming and copyrighting, I feel better creating more content where my ideas (merely my own interpretations of the works of others) can help contribute to work of a fellow producer.

Anyway, my content is yours. Attribution is appreciated but not required. Thanks for listening.