Théo Lepage-Richer

Getting the Word Out: Dissemination and Copyrights

My final project could be divided in three parts – its design, its hardware and its software. As all these aspects were developed using open source code and designs shared online, I decided to follow the same ethos and give access to all my files through my Fab Academy page and, from there, all the manufacturing processes could actually be done locally by any site wishing to reproduce or reiterate my project.

The question of this project’s intellectual property therefore arises – could I really claim any form of ‘authorship’ over it, and in which ways would I want this design to be disseminated? There is of course nothing patentable about my rotocaster, but I still wish that my name remains associated with it if anybody attempts to make another version of it. I mentioned all the designs that inspired my owns, and simply wish that somebody would do the same in my case – not as a way to reaffirm my ‘authority’ over it, but rather to facilitate this project’s genealogy. In that sense, if someone wants to go back to the designs that I personally built upon, he/she could easily track them down on my own page.

This is why I want to use the Fab Lab license, as stipulated under the MIT license. It goes as follows:

Copyright (c) 2015 Théo Lepage-Richer

This work may be reproduced, modified, distributed, performed, and displayed for any purpose, but must acknowledge its name and Fab Lab connections. Copyright is retained and must be preserved. The work is provided as is; no warranty is provided, and users accept all liability.

For the rest, I do not intend to attempt at making any profit out of it. In fact, as my own background is so alien to Fab Academy, I decided to give a try to the network’s ethos and make something that would both serve it, and build upon it (in other words, while I was initially tempted to make some useless speculative project, which would have been more my kind of jam, I ended up thinking that I might learn the most from Fab Academy if I play by its rules – I will plenty of time to do my useless projects afterward).

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