Blogging frequently involves getting inspiration and sometimes content from elsewhere, and the conventions of attribution should be followed. I have in my past on one occasion not done this, and I am ashamed of myself and the article is no longer on the website. If you are reading something on this website that you feel is valuable and bears repeating please feel free to do so. Please include an attribution with anything that you copy – and to help you do this I have installed Tynt which will do the attribution for you. Also please feel free to use any of our photos and videos with attribution, the hotlinking block was put on because I got annoyed by some people just using my photographs without saying “Thank You”, and to prevent scamming websites use my content to rob tenants by pretending to be a landlord. Guest Bloggers here retain copyright for their work, and if it isn’t too much trouble please could you acknowledge the Guest as well as this site.

I was prompted to write this blog after reading Leo’s Zenhabits, one of the top 100 blogs on the internet. I’ve copied my summary of his words, and you can link to the full text by clicking Vitruvian Man. I would recommend that you read his blog as I find superb tips for modern living there.

Zen & Vitruvian Man

“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. 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. While you are under no obligation to do so, I would appreciate it if you give me credit for any work of mine that you use, and ideally, link back to the original. If you feel like spreading a copy of my ebook, I’d appreciate payment. I’d prefer people buy my ebook, but if they want to share with friends, they have every right to do so. I’m not a big fan of copyright laws anyway, especially as they’re being applied these days by corporations, used to crack down on the little guys so they can continue their large profits.

Copyrights are often touted as protecting the artist, but in most cases the artist gets very little while the corporations make most of the money. I’m trying this experiment to see whether releasing copyright really hurts the creator of the content.

I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.

The lack of copyright, and blatant copying by other artists and even businesses, never hurt Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to images such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, or the Vitruvian Man. It’s never hurt Shakespeare. I doubt that it’s ever really hurt any artist (although I might just be ignorant here).”