Everyone’s An Expert (Just Not On Copyright Law)


D’oh!
Originally uploaded by Mark McLaughlin.

Interesting dust-up brewing this morning. In one corner is Seth Godin. In the other? “BNPublishing.” (Whoever they are.)

Apparently, BNPublishing has taken Seth’s free Everyone’s An Expert e-Book, repackaged it, and is now selling it through Amazon, eBay, and one would presume other outlets. A quick dig this morning on the BNPublishing website seems to show their business model as taking non-rights-protected works and packaging them up for easy sale. For example, they are also selling titles such as The Art of War and the like on their site.

The issue: Everyone’s An Expert was released under a CreativeCommons-Attribution-2.5 license, which allows commercial usage.

(There is another license, CreativeCommons-Attribution-NonCommercial-2.5, that precludes commercial usage. But that’s not the license that was used.)

Any experts out there? Are there other aspects (e.g. trademark) that would prevent this?

Not sure, but I think Seth might be out of luck on this one. YAFLE.

(N.B. Not a lawyer, etc.)

Update: MindBlogging has a similar take.

There Is No “MySpace”

“There is no ‘MySpace.’ I have all my spaces.” – Dean Landsman

Great point from Dean. Trying to pull all of one’s personae into a single representation feels unnatural. Different parts of ourselves are relevant at different times, in different places, in different contexts, with different people.

Clue Unit #3 Show Notes: February 7, 2007

(click here to listen – MP3)

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Episode 3, about 30 minutes.

Today’s Topic – Fear:

For this episode, we focused on a single topic:  "Business fear of connecting with communities online."  What is it that prevents businesses (especially, it seems, larger ones) from connecting with customers on line.  Is it cultural?  Legal?  Educational?  Our thoughts in here, would love to hear yours…

(crossposted from http://www.clueunit.com)

Do You Get A Bonus For A Long Term Commitment?

Steve Garfield: “I subscribe to people.”

Bryan Person elaborates:

“Video blogger extraordinaire Steve Garfield, whom I ran into last night at a meetup of the Web Innovators Group, has a saying that I realy like: “I subscribe to people.”

And I’d suspect that most of us would say the same. While the blogs I read and podcasts I listen to need to offer compelling content on some level for me to say interested, what also ensures that I keep reading and listening are the people behind that content. As you get to know the content producers as people — either through the tidbits about their lives, interests, and passions that are revealed to their audience along on the way, or the personal relationships you develop with them on your own — you can’t help but want to read about and listen to those passions day after day, week after week.”

Ditto. Not just for blogs and podcasts. For business, too.

And life.

Clue Unit #2 Show Notes: January 30, 2007

(click here to listen – MP3)

(click here to listen – M4A)

(click here to subscribe to this feed)

In this, our second podcast, we bring back…

  1. Introduction
  2. Announcements — conferences, news, etc.
  3. Focused Topical Discussion
  4. Conference Chatter — Anything goes

        

Today’s Topics:

  • Our inspiration to get into the business of online communities
  • What would you say to a marketing manager if you had 5 minutes to talk about online communities?
  • The controversy surrounding Microsoft sending bloggers free Ferrari laptops loaded with Vista.
  • Continue reading “Clue Unit #2 Show Notes: January 30, 2007”