Uncopyright?

My recent irritating and unpleasant experience with having my content copied made me think about the issue of copyright from a very different perspective. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Two of the most successful bloggers I know have an Uncopyright policy. They have both been doing it this way for years so I assume it must be serving them well.

What do you think of the following models of "Uncopyright?":

Leo Babauta of Zenhabits.net: Feel free to steal my content

I quote:

"Now, I’m granting full permission to use any of my content on Zen Habits or in my ebook, Zen To Done, in any way you like.

I release my copyright on this content.

From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK. :)"

Steve Pavlina of http://stevepavlina.com: Releasing my Copyrights

Quote:

"Unless I explicitly state otherwise, all future content I personally create and publish shall not be copyrighted and shall instantly be placed into the public domain. This includes future blog posts, podcasts, newsletters, ebooks, etc. If I decide to copyright something new, I’ll include an obvious copyright notice. Otherwise you can safely assume it’s in the public domain."

I, too, think that worrying too much about scrapers is a waste of time. Google knows.

People who matter will usually attribute the source if they use any of our content.

As for Google, I think here comes the rel=author tag into play, so Google knows who created what first. As for using other people's work, I am familiar with both blogs, but I still wouldn't use their content, not even as translations, because this kind of content is backed up by so much personal experience / authority that it wouldn't feel right for me to do so, but that might be just me ;-)