The changes made need to be only as small as to add a top hat and a moustache onto the Mona Lisa. The unfairness is highlighted, when you consider adding a top hat and a moustache onto Mickey Mouse. Who do you think could get away with that?
So why is there such a difference? Why are the interests of commercial entities so much for powerful than the interests of the Public, that is every single on of us. This is a question to which I am searching for an answer. I wanted to address the balance and give something back to the world by donating some of my images to the public domain. To this day I have done so with one image, titled Sky Hare.
I would do so with more of my designs, if it were not for one concern. Any artist who alters "Sky Hare," even if they only colour him in, can automatically claim copyright to him, essentially even stopping me from using a coloured version him in my art work. That is how fragile my donation to the world is.
There are ways to protect the image, but they all involve holding onto the copyright and essentially licensing the work to the world. These are avenues I intend to explore with my other designs, but meanwhile I shall track the progress of "Sky Hare" and see how long he can survive in his new ever diminishing habitat.
Stealing of the Common
Hare.
The law protects the
man or woman
Who poaches the Hare of
the common
It shelters the villain
who does not share
To leave the common to
lack a Hare
The law demands that we
atone
when we copy things we
do not own
But leaves the lords
and ladies fine
Who takes things yours
and mine
The poor think that
they do not dare
without lawyers that
Hare to share.
This may be so for they
must endure
Those who conspire the
law to sure.
The law protects the
man or woman
Who poaches the Hare
off the common
And the common will
then lack a Hare
Till we say no and
bring it back to share.
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