Please Steal My Content: Open Source Blogging

I've been inspired by a number of posts recently. Initially, Sterling at the BizLift blog pointed me to this Zenhabits post on Open Source Blogging. Please read the entire post from Leo...it's worth it.

This is Creative Commons taken one step further.  With Creative Commons, you are giving someone to right to use and reuse your content, provided they give you credit. I first found out about Creative Commons when I downloaded David Meerman Scott's eBook, The New Rules of PR. David promoted to those interested to do whatever they wanted with the book - to save it on their site, to print multiple copies, etc. This resulted in over 250,000 downloads. Smart move.

Leo's movement is to give up rights to his blog and book content completely (CCzero), with the mere suggestion that credit would be nice. It could be a risky move. After the initial buzz, people may not buy Leo's book or support his site. But one thing is for sure, this move is all about the customer.

I'm not sure how many businesses or individuals can actually do this, but it's worth the experimentation. It's also completely in line with what we have been preaching at Junta42 - for businesses to let go of their content and focus on getting great content in the hands of the people who need it (a frightening thought for most businesses).

Please Steal My Blog Content - The Uncopyright

With support of thought leaders such as Marketing Interactions, ContentMarketingToday and the Web Business Marketing Blog, content marketing is starting to catch on.  Businesses are beginning to realize that, as Ardath from Marketing Interactions puts it, "...that content marketing is not an occasional shot in the dark at producing an article, but an ongoing and consistent activity" of delivering valuable content to customers.

More businesses are doing this, but from the amount of clutter and interruption marketing that we still continue to see on a daily basis, it's not happening fast enough. When an organization takes a content marketing approach to their customers, it's very similar to the Green movement and the environment. Just as a green supporter is very aware of what they contribute to the environment, the same goes for how a business contributes (or lack of contribution) to the betterment of the customer.

Our goal here at Junta42 is to get information on how businesses can become an organization with a content marketing mindset. An organization that is all about producing valuable content for the benefit of the customer. We believe that if a business truly practices this, the payback will be a profitable customer relationship.  If there is a post that I produced on the site that is helpful to an organization to get to that point, I don't really care if they know it came from me, or read it on my site (nice, but not required).

So with that, this post is an official notification that my writing and posts here at the Junta42 blog are now in the public domain. I hereby waive all claim of copyright in this work; it may be used or altered in any manner without attribution or notice to me. Attribution, of course, is appreciated.

Join the Revolution - Give Up Your Content

Hans at the Web Business Marketing Blog started a Change.org movement for bloggers to release their work under Creative Commons (with attribution). This is not what Leo did or what I'm doing, but this is what I believe that all bloggers and businesses should be doing, at a minimum.  So please, join this revolution and join the movement that Hans started at Change.org. 

Comments

[Hans De Keulenaer]

Welcome to the open source blogging movement. Zenhabits did indeed take it a step further than Creative Commons (CC), as you did, by waiving attribution. In effect, you're releasing your work in the public domain.

I would expect the difference of attribution to be minor - most polite people would probably attribute anyway. CC is developing a licence CCzero which comes close to what you need. Moreover, for residents in the US, there is already a public domain licence available through CC.

Creative Commons gives you another benefit: CC licences are a search option in Google's advanced search.

Thanks for the reference to the change.org group.

[sterling]

Bold move Joe. I'm gonna go digging through your archives...and of course acknowledge you on anything I use.

Thank you for the mention & link. Much appreciated.