A few months back, I heard about a new currency called Bitcoin. It takes all the advantages of fiat money (e.g. frees gold from the burden of being mediums of exchange so we can use it in actual physical things), and gets rid of that pesky state-sponsored central banking thing using the magic of computers(!!!). It’s all very technical and summarized much better by the Irish Times than I can do here, but the point is, it’s the future.
It’s also recently reached parity with the US Dollar.
Bitcoin has one very, very nice advantage for online donations: there are no transaction fees. None. Zero. The only fees one might run into are if you want to exchange them into dollars, pounds, or any other currency, and even then it’s lower than, say, PayPal. Our friends at YouTipIt take advantage of that.
YouTipIt is a service for “Internet street performers”. If you were to pass a busker in New York City and enjoy their music/speaking/whatevering, perhaps you’d toss some cash into their hat/box/jar/face. YouTipIt works the same way, but the cash isn’t dollars, it’s Bitcoin.
Theoretically, one could just post their Bitcoin address (a very long number like 1FSxkh5kNk5EZgm1V2KWQSNv8WExXxpCBY), and ask Bitcoin users to tip that way. Unfortunately, you can only send or receive Bitcoins with the Bitcoin client, which is A) a somewhat unintuitive piece of software for non-geeks, and B) has to be running in order for you to receive payments. It’s like the bad old days of the 90s when you had to actively “check your email” by opening Outlook or something.
YouTipIt, on the other hand, handles all the transactions, holds onto the Bitcoins, and notifies you when you’ve received a payment. You can withdraw all the Bitcoins you get to your local machine in one fell swoop, only having to open the client once.
They also act as a Bitcoin exchange for tippers, and can sell you Bitcoins to tip with if you don’t already have them. Unfortunately, they don’t yet do this in the other direction, so you still have to actually touch the local Bitcoin client if you’re on the receiving end. This might be perfectly fine in the long run, if the Bitcoin client becomes more user-friendly for non-technical people, but we’ll see how things develop.
Anyway, Bitcoin is a fascinating new technology, and YouTipIt makes it simpler to use for donations. You can use it to tip Plankhead projects here.
What the Hell is Going On With Plankhead.com’s Copyright Notice?
To anyone with a passing knowledge of copyright, Creative Commons, and The Pirate Bay, the new footer for this website is probably extremely confusing.
First, we have the Kopimi symbol, which is Piratbyrån‘s opposite-of-copyright symbol (i.e. you’re allowed to copy this, in fact please do so). This is then immediately followed by the word “Copyright”. And then to further muck things up, a Creative Commons notice.
What? Cognitive dissonance? In my Internets?
Actually, no. This is all easily explained by the third line: “This notice is not an endorsement of intellectual property law.”
You see, I would love it if I could just slap the Kopimi symbol up there and free everything you see here from the prison of copyright just like that. Unfortunately, that’s not how copyright works.
Wikipedia says “Kopimi is similar to the CC0 license created by Creative Commons.” This is inaccurate, and I’d change it if there were a source for me to cite (Which, since I’ve posted this, now there is, but it would look really bad if I changed it myself, so somebody else should go do it). You see, CC0 contains legal language which, to the extent possible under law, legally releases the work in question into the public domain. Kopimi, on the other hand, is a picture, a word, and a not particularly well-explained website. It is not legally binding.
Perhaps this is exactly what Piratbyrån intended: who cares that it’s not legally binding, because we ignore copyright law anyway. I agree with that sentiment. However, I also acknowledge the reality that not everyone is Piratbyrån. Some people would refuse to make use of a free work if it’s still, legally, under traditional copyright. So I need to add some fine print, for their sake.
Thus, first I add the traditional copyright notice, including the internationally recognized word “Copyright”. This is because, for better or for worse, Plankhead does hold copyright on everything here. I don’t have a choice in the matter. That’s the law.
However, instead of saying All Rights Reserved, the next line is a declaration of Creative Commons licensing. Why the Attribution license, and not the aforementioned CC0? Because plagiarism is bad. If there’s any reason why some kind of copyright-ish law should exist, it would be to protect against that.
Of course, I’m not really sure that the legal system should be used to prevent plagiarism. But, again, the people I’m writing this fine print for care about what’s legal and what’s not, so I might as well throw that in there. If you’re a free-spirited pirate, you’re ignoring everything after the big pyramid with the K, anyway.
Speaking of which, why am I using the Kopimi symbol instead of the perfectly good Creative Commons logos? Because to the people who don’t understand copyright law, and don’t read the fine print, Creative Commons has a branding problem. Says Nina Paley:
Kopimi, on the other hand, is a brand without connotations to most people. We have the opportunity to establish it as a “do whatever the hell you want” symbol, because that is, in fact, what it is.
So that’s what’s going on with our copyright notice. The legal language is a necessary evil, but unless you’re a lawyer, ignore it all and do whatever you want. As long as you don’t try to pass off something from Plankhead as your own, it’s all good.