Most of the time I am a traditional copyright supporter, although not a zealous one. But I do not do it all the time.

I like to maintain flexibility on copyright. When I first released a set of UVmapped meshes for sculptie making in Wings, I was asked and asked if people can use my free meshes for making items. That touched me, but I knew they were the vanishing minority.

I put those items out as public domain. Yes, public domain! Not even a credit was due me. It was nice that so many thought of asking me, but I had my reasons for putting these items out as free.

They are part of what I call “methods and tools”. I have a strong feeling that the world is a better place if more people learn how to create art, and have easy access to simple tools in which to create with in order to learn the basics. These UVmapped meshes were part of the “tools” for people to do this.

Eventually once they outgrew the free programs, I would expect them to graduate to more powerful copyrighted software. But I feel strongly that people should support the independents, and not support the pirated software if one can avoid it. So my prims were OBJ files that were geared to use in Carrara and Wings. Carrara being an inexpensive 3d program, and Wings being outright free.

I could have used a Creative Commons license – but I felt that on something as basic as a uvmapped sphere, plane or torus, it was nothing that took me a long time to do. Less than a minute, actually. Slightly longer than rezzing a prim in Second Life. So I made them completely and utterly free.

Surprisingly not many people know how to make even the basic uvmapping for a sculpt, because they don’t know how to use 3d programs. UVMapping is not always an easy subject for people.

I consider giving away tools and methods as related to the ideas of memetics when Daniel Dennett says – Every time you read it or say it, you make another copy in your brain. They are the infinitely copiable fishing rod.

Every time you read it or say it, you make another copy in your brain.

The profession of teaching passes on our tools and methods, keeping them alive long after us. While I also support the rights of those to get paid for teaching, and the right to get paid for your fishing rods, the basic methods need to be free for all to teach them to fish, to make the fishing rod.

So this is why I am pretty steadfastly opposed to things like software patents, because most of these are too basic to claim “creative property” in. Manufacturing I can understand, as it costs real effort to create something that is material – but for immaterial methods in the digital world, that argument gets a bit thin.

Copyright is a whole other ball of wax – it is the protection of creative works. Not methods. And as I hope to explain, conflating patent and copyright is a dangerous thing to do. Because, the fish and the fishing rod are similar in that they are both creative works, and belong under copyright. Copyright protects your creative works, patent tries to protect how you do the work.

A digital creative work is a fish, even if it is an infinitely copiable fish, or even if it is an infinitely copiable fishing rod.

A software patent is teaching someone how to fish or making a fishing rod, and you can teach as many people to catch that virtual fish as you have fish to catch. You can teach people how to make a fishing rod to infinity.

Software is a fishing rod, even if it is an infinitely copiable fishing rod, and it requires the methods to fish to be free to make these fishing rods. Even though you can teach someone how to fish infinitely, each fish took time to catch, each rod took time to make. I believe in the spread of good ideas – they can only help people to fish better.

Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. Confucius was a wise man.

Now on to the fish – my occasional freebie “fishes” – items I have given away for free in SL.

I have given away some freebies as a kind of advertising and to some extent for others to critique my work – such as my Minoan octopus flask which was a set of textures I made for a model when I was first learning 3d. It is still free in Second Life, however with no-mod and no-transfer permissions.

It is sometimes nice to make something for free, and give it to the world, and there is nothing wrong with this.

What is wrong though, is when people expect you to make all your creative work for free. They want all your fish, not only that – they never want to learn how to fish. Most of them don’t even want to take up learning how to use the fishing rods. They just take the fishing rods and resell them, too. And some come to SL thinking they can take all your fish and your fishing rods and resell them, like an infinite money machine of fishing.

This just isn’t sustainable. It is not fair to ask someone to do all your fishing for you for nothing. We artists have to eat and pay our tier – it may seem noble to some of you that we starve… but there’s no nobility in being poor. If you’ve ever been hungry and on the street (and its happened to me), I suppose maybe then people would understand the whole “indignity” of it all. Though, I doubt it.

I’ll continue to be perplexed how some people in Second Life think that content creators are somehow part of the “corporate menace” and they are justified in stealing their fish and their fishing rods, and reselling it. Especially those of us who mostly just work for our own pleasure so we can pay our tier, and many of us don’t even make enough to pay for that. I’m not making any big profit in Second Life, I usually have to pay tier every month because my sales don’t cover it.

And lately, I wonder more and more why I continue to. I adore Caledon, really if it weren’t for living in Caledon – I’d probably be long gone by now. By now, it’s just the people who make me stay in Second Life, and if the people move, so will I.