Copyright and Theft

Beyond demonstrational purposes, much of the value of the Zen Garden comes from inspiration and sharing of knowledge. This is a double-edged sword, since sharing ultimately means that sooner or later, someone is going to expect more from you than you wish to give.

From the beginning, all designs submitted were done so under the agreement that the CSS would be available for limited use by others, governed by a Creative Commons license. However, since the images were largely responsible for the uniqueness of the work, full copyright control of them was reserved for the original designer. Anyone wishing to base work on the designs was permitted to copy and modify the CSS, but using any of the GIF, JPG, or PNG files, or reusing them wholesale without explicit permission from the designer was prohibited.

In theory, this was a good way of retaining enough individual ownership of the work for the original designer, while allowing for sampling and reuse of parts of the CSS file to encourage learning efforts. The point of the site was to share the knowledge, so it seemed like the best of both worlds. In practice, it turned out to be less than ideal.

Not long after the Zen Garden launched, the first copycat sites started appearing. Some would rip off the entire design, images and all. These are clear cases of copyright violation, as the images are protected.

However, some would use and modify both images and CSS, or sample bits and pieces of each, or reuse design elements in a manner that felt a little bit too much like reuse. In certain cases, the final result was barely perceptible as originating from a Zen Garden design. In others the CSS carried enough of the design elements that with or without images, the result mimicked the original in ways the design's creator wasn't comfortable with.

What could be done about the latter? In most cases, a quick email was all that was necessary, as most people are willing to respect the rights and wishes of the person they took their inspiration from. But in cases where the violator wasn't as courteous, the problem became enforcement. Unless the original images were involved, the Creative Commons license was open enough that there was no recourse. This type of reuse was technically allowed, although many contributors had a problem with it.

Creative copyright infringement has long been a gray area. How much of an original work do you need to change before it becomes a new work? Are you allowed to start with someone else's copyrighted work, if the final result is completely different? Since these are questions that even the courts struggle with, there were no easy answers.

Note

CSS files are licensed under the By-attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. More details about this license are available at Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0).

For the Zen Garden, the ideal is a solution that leaves the CSS open enough to allow for sampling but discourages wholesale or even partial reuse of the designs in commercial work (or otherwise) without the designer's permission. A fine balance is necessarytoo open and designers wouldn't feel comfortable submitting; too closed and much of the value of the Zen Garden would be lost in overprotection.

Without shutting down the site, there will never be any guarantees that the work will not be reused against the wishes of the original designers. License or not, this is simply the nature of publishing creative work: It will get ripped off. It happens all the timejust look around pirated-sites.com.

The Web makes it slightly easier to do, thanks to the View Source option built into every browser. But it's also slightly easier to catch, thanks to referral logs and search engines.

At the time of writing, the issue still is far from resolved. A decision has been made to continue allowing limited use of the CSS files under a Creative Commons license, one that discourages commercial reuse. It's not a perfect solution, but it works in a way that acknowledges that most have good intentions.

The lesson learned is that a few bad eggs will do what they want no matter which license is slapped on the work, so it's simply a matter of choosing a method that notifies those with good intentions of what they're allowed to do.