Copyheart: Caring by no longer caring

Okay so, I'd been thinking about what to do about a minor conundrum I've been having. Namely, what to do about stuff on this site I'd created that either mixed hints of non-libre content or that I'm not proud of enough to release formally under the CC-BY-SA. For one thing I wasn't sure what to do about the text of the site; I didn't think anything I'd written apart from Stablehand posts was quite awesome enough to just shout "everything here is a quality resource!", which is what the CC-BY-SA had usually evoked in my mind.

And, well... long story short, the answer I guess is ♡ copyheart.

So what's that? It's a "nicer" variant on the idea of a copyright notice, which instead of reminding readers that the law restricts every use by default, reminds them that the author is fundamentally okay with the diffusion of their ideas. This is my version of it:

♡ 2014 TAKUMI. Copying is an act of love. Please copy, adapt, and share.

Some people might complain that this is the most hippy-dippy "copyright" notice they've ever seen (indeed, I've seen that), and you know what? I absolutely agree. It makes me feel like the biggest dork ever to put that in the footer. But at the same time it makes me feel way less like a hypocrite than writing the "truth" (the gritty truth) that by not taking any action to liberate my stuff, I choose to censor people by leaving all rights reserved. Which would suggest that I'm okay with that, and I'm not.

A really cool thing about copyheart is that it really neatly solves the problem I'd been having with fan art, which is that it seems intuitive to feel one can't liberate it, but on the other hand, I honestly didn't care what happened to it, and felt like there was something especially wrong with "retaining the right to censor" on things that weren't even "mine". Now, without trying to use the CC-BY-SA and open the can of worms of what happens when people have to use a libre licence on fan works, I can communicate my intentions that they be used and that I not act as a second barrier (after the original creator) to using things.

When you stop and think about it, it's really rather elegant for a handful of corny-sounding words without any legal fortifications built up behind them. (Which, by the way is why nothing I've already made CC-BY-SA is going un-CC-BY-SA any time soon, nor am I going to stop using it for my more substantial original things. It's like an extra safeguard for things you really, really want to stay libre.)

Accordingly, I may start bringing some of my fan things back onto Sangkara when I make them and when they're "good enough", particularly stuff for this project called "RESTART" (a spin-off to OFF) that I'm thinking about making.

And by the way, if for whatever reason you need to type copyheart, and you're using Linux like me, it's really easy to add it to your compose key! Find your .XCompose file in your home directory and put in the following line to type copyheart as "o3":

<Multi_key> <o> <3>   : "♡" U2661 # Copyheart

You'll need to have the XCompose file set up first but in my opinion it's the best way to type special characters (you can type practically anything) so it's worth it.