Sam Rose:
What if I invited you to write an essay, record a song, or make a movie, and then post it at my website and have it served totally free? What if the only catch was that I would retain full and exclusive rights to reuse your content in any way that I see fit, and that if I made any money off of my reuse of your content, you were not entitled to any of it? Would you agree to this?
What if I invited you to work and collaborate with my group to explore and research in your areas of interest? Surely, this would be an exciting opportunity to share and learn and grow. But, what if I made you sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevented you and everyone in the group from talking about or re-using anything that the group produced without my express permission, and then only in the way that I dictate? What if I also put in that agreement that I retain full commercial rights over our collaboration? Would you still collaborate with me? What if I did not create this agreement, but later threatened you with legal action and claimed all of our collaborations as my Intellectual Property when you decided to try and use our collaborations, or something that emerged from them, in away that I decided I don’t like? How would you then ever be sure of what is and is not “ok” to use or reuse?
What if I created a collaborative project, but I decided to be the total authority over that project? What if I invited you to collaborate with me, but when you disagreed with me one time in a way that I didn’t care for, I had structured the rules of the project so that I could kick you out of it, and there is nothing that you or anyone could do about it? Is this an inviting proposal for you? Why not?
If you do not like my above proposals for a collaborative project, then perhaps you can offer some form of counter -proposal? Is there some other way to collaborate other than having everything totally controlled by me? Please, someone help me. It’s becoming harder and harder to manage all of this stuff when I alone control and make the decisions about everything. Plus, I originally wanted to collaborate with other people to broaden my vision by looking at things through multiple perspectives. But, for some reason, with my rules and ways of doing things, everything just keeps coming to the same conclusion (which is my conclusion).
So, can anyone out there suggest a better way of creating a system of collaboration?