I wrote my first Copyright Statement in 1998 when I created my first version of personal website.

The first statement (1998) was written because I hope my works wouldn't be used commercially without attribution and my permission again.

Since my second version website was created, I started to receive tons of email requesting my permission to use my articles, mostly from from students, and mostly around the end of summer/winter breaks or semesters. Obviously my articles were used for their homework.

I was very eager to help educate Taiwan society to respect the property of wisdom, so I setup a protocol for students to follow, to get the permission of using my works. Responding to those requests was really time and energy consuming. I actually learned a great deal from the requests from students of different age, gender, region, and generation. Their attitudes vary a lot: from enthusiastic music newbies constantly exchanging ideas with me, to some one leaving a terse note, "Well written. I'll use that for my homework. Bye.", to somebody asking "I need English translation of your Mozart article. Because I have a short deadline, could you please finish the translation and send it to me by Monday? Thank you!".

I have to admit that I once felt so out-dated.

In 2004 summer, I started considering releasing the copyright of my articles, for two main reasons:

  1. I believe I have written clear enough to explain what copyright is and why it's relevant. For those who already know to respect others, my words don't add anything; those who are willing to learn can learn from what I wrote; as for those who simply can't learn to respect others (yet, hopefully), if my copyright statement couldn't convince them, how would my additional email?

  2. I started to meditate in 2003. Meditation enabled me to clearly see my clinging to fame (I made sure my credit is mentioned), to profits (I felt angry when others used my works for their commercial purpose), to phenomena (I couldn't let go whenever I failed to change a student's attitude), and to achievement (I wanted to know how many people used my works). I also realized that the clinging benefited nobody but simply brought me unhappiness. With these observations, my practice gradually equipped me with the power to let go.

Then for a while I got busy in my life so I haven't got any chance to update my copyright statement, until early 2006.

Now I'm choosing between Public Domain and Creative Common. One of them will be the default copyright policy of my blog.