Capitalizing on Creative Commons - relaying a warning from Seth Godin

I mailed Seth Godin today, on prompt from Amazon on his "new" book Everyone is an Expert, that in fact launched as an ebook under Creative Commons licensing: I was wondering what was "new" about it.

It was not new. Don't buy it.

He explained why today in his blog. So - don't buy the book - download it for free and do not waste money on the book. Make money on the website it points to as a background book motivating for the launch - Squidoo. To double on the use and leverage on the content - use HubPages too - they are complimentary. Squidoo seems to be great for SEO your keywords, like Sustainability Entrepreneurship, but HubPages right now is better it seems, getting it to the first page (Squidoo to the second). Collectively, they've made those keywords 1.1m hits together, pointing to the ideas I want leverage to in relation to these - you know it: Sustainopreneurship :).

And Amazon: If you don't take away that book from your assortment - or point to the book where you get it for free - I will take away my Amazon contextual ads from this blog!

Peace,
Anders

Addendum [Feb 11]: I have responded re: the moral/legal issue (down below). The licence chosen does not prevent someone to make commercial work of it legally, but I think it is morally dubious to capitalize on it anyways, and also to claim the book to be "new" when in fact it was published 2005 in the first place. Moreover, Amazon has let the comment stay in their own page you can get it for free by download - now it is up to the Amazon customer to make her choice. Still, of Business Ethics reasons, I stick to the encouragement to get it off the shelves as I pointed to Amazon, especially since the author himself informs us what is at hand.

Comments

[Manas Tungare]

Hi Anders,

Whether or not Seth anticipated or intended this printing is now a moot point, since he explicitly made those rights available. The publishing house and Amazon are in perfectly legal waters, while Seth seems to be going against the intent of Creative Commons licensing by asking us not to buy his book.

I've analyzed the issue in more detail at the link provided below. I hope your readers would like to see the other side of the argument too.

Thanks,
Manas.

[Brian]

I agree with the first poster. I makes no sense for Godin to "campaign" against people buying the book when he is the one who make it available using creative commons license. I knew this was going to happen eventually. All these guys want to "seem" cool and down for an open Internet promoting CC use, but when someone (who isn't part of their peer group) actually uses the CC license, they get upset.

I think it's okay for Godin to tell people the book is also available for free, but don't make the person selling the book look like a bad person simply because they are exercising the right "you" gave them. They are not wrong, or bad. Some people want to buy the book, so people want to download it. This person made a new option available. Geez.

[Phillip Marzella]

The spirit of CC is to make the content available for free for dissemination with full authorship recognition and no commercial exploitation. Now - what do the folks at the publishing house charge $9.90 for? The binding? I agree with the others that if you (Seth) make it available for free then (legally) it is available - however- it does look more than a little opportunistic to charge for something you obtained freely.

[Duncan]

I have to agree with the first two commenters, there are different types of CC licenses, Seth picked on that didn't forbid it being republished commercially, and hence it was. If you want to control your work, don't publish it with a CC license, simple really.

[andersabrahamsson]

You are correct with the point that it does not explicitly state that the legal rights does not prevent it from third-party commercial exploitation, but the business and moral issue is another thing. Now, the public is informed (even with comment with permission from Amazon), and the option is transparently transmitted on the Amazon page in the comment, so the choice is free.

The false marketing side of it is still that it is not new. It was published 2005 in the digital format. This conversation is multi-layered, multi-topic.

Also, as someone pointed out over at MetaFilter there is also a reluctance from the CC community to include a non-print disclaimer in their licenses. You can have those "some rights reserved" in many dimensions and levels, and one of my fav's is the Developing World License, to take one example.