We are a collective of four persons, trying to build a translation and publishing cooperative in Poland.
As a rule, we aim to publish our works under CC-BY-SA licence, and we do not want to sell them. Thus, we need to find a way to get funding upfront, so we can pay justly for the work of translators and editors.
That is what this post is about – please kindly help us learn more about possible sources of funding, compatible with our venture, across Europe and the rest of the world.
We are looking for trusted and ethical crowfunding operators, fiscal sponsors, donors and grantors that would be keen and able to support translation and Polish edition of texts similar to (currently in our pipeline):
- Winterhorn RPG (how governments destroy activist groups).
- “Anarchy works” by Peter Gelderloos (a panorama of anarchist and other stateless social models across known history)
All constructive hints welcome.
More on "The Black Hole Publishing Collective"
We are united by our love of clever and interesting stories about how the world can be built on cooperation, solidarity and the common good. We differ in age, personality, experience, and knowledge. Among us there are experienced translators, seasoned activists and people just entering this world. But we share a common goal: to bring to Polish activist persons the experiences from other places and times. This is why we have formed the Black Hole Publishing Collective, whose name, among other things, refers to the situation we find ourselves in as humanity. Our goal is to translate and publish texts in printed or electronic form (text and sound) — as we choose, but also on demand. We hope to create an “alternative” co-op that will become an official social enterprise. For now, we operate as an alliance of freelancers.
Thanks for the hint.
As for licencing schemes, I know PPL almost since the moment it was publicly announced. I was also considering NC clause in CC licence. I cannot speak for my co-op peeps, but my way of thinking you may find below:
I am generally against the idea of “intellectual property” as it is now used in capitalist economy and ideology. Apart from the reputation aspect (attribution), to me it is an artificially expanded bullshit that is only invented to extend control over immaterial creation. That is why, even if I refer to licensing laws, I publish it under the section “For those who obey law…”.
I am in no position to monitor and enforce restrictions against commercial use of my works. Even more, boundaries there are pretty much blurred and there are many cases that I, personally, would see differently depending on a particular situation. Say, giving a printed version of my work for free to participants of an event – depending on whether the event participation was free, freemium or highly paid. All that means that the NC restriction would be futile, thus showing its weakness. And PPL inherits that, adding its own ambiguities and overregulation. But the main problem is, IMO, that NC licences make a statement: if you want to make money on my work, pay me royalties. And that is reinforcing and perpetuation of the “intellectual property” paradigm, which I reject. Not that I’d expect to become filthy rich that way.
So, instead of making a paper tiger, I chose to go another way. Share-Alike clause is much easier to enforce. It can be monitored by anyone who cares enough to check the attribution and compare it with the derivative work licence. Then the request to change the licence can be made retroactively. Also, the virality of SA clause makes me happier. I do not care if someone makes money by producing and audiobook with my essays, as long as I can take this audio and spread it around for free. This way whatever the audio producer “exploited” out of me, they return to the community, using open licence themselves. So, my priority is to encourage penetration of open licences throughout the economy, rather than limit them to my/our political bubble. If it works for Arduino and Wikipedia, I do not see why it would not work for me.
Thank for explaining your thought process. I perticularily like point #3 about still freely distrubuting derived works even if others are selling it comercialy and with SA people can still be directed to you, I haven’t considered that myself.
For point #2, I can definately see where you’re coming from. I always saw NC licences as “I want this to be anti-commercial” rather than “pay me royalties”, but that’s just my bias and I didn’t think of it differently until you pointed it out, thank you for that and I’ll keep that in mind.
I’m totally on board with you on the problem with so-called “intelectual property”. Thank you for sharing how you’re takling the problem. I definately appreciate it.
Libre Software projects have orgs like Software Conservancy to defend their licenses. I dont know of any such org for CC licenses but if such a thing exists it might be useful to you