Copy Right, Copy Left, … Copy Left and Right

When a fellow blogger lifted my lines without attributing it to me, I left him a note and he corrected the error. He attributed my work to me, but used it. So he moved from copying to copy lefting.

When some important organizations reproduced entire articles, they gave me the credit for my work but did not let me know. I was torn between the honour and the indignation. I make no money from my work either directly or through ads, and possibly those organizations have greater visibility than I do. So more people may get exposed to my ideas and expression.

Today a wonderful and much appreciated retelling of the story about a great Telugu man in Telugu was blocked by a man who wrote a less appreciated version but first, in English. He was dissatisfied with the acknowledgement. He was possessive of the parts of the story that conformed to his version and contemptuously dismissive of the parts of the story that were different from his narration.

Tulsidas and Valmiki came to my mind.

Valmiki wrote the Ramayanam, the story of  the great Indian Hero Sri Rama who was his contemporary. It is wonderful work about a wonderful man, in Sanskrit. It has both biographical and historical value. 5000 years or more later, we still know it was Valmiki who wrote the Ramayanam. But he did not make a single gold coin out of it. He told his students Lava and Kusa not to accept money even if Sri Rama himself were to insist.

In the 16th century, Tulsidas felt that this wonderful story needed to be told in Hindi. So that more people would know it. He wrote the Ram Charit Manas which conformed to the original in parts and deviated in parts, but was beautiful in its entireity. The Sanskrit scholars of his time resisted this work. There is a story about throwing it into the fire or putting it at the bottom of a pile or otherwise trying to get rid of it. Then Sri Rama himself saves the work by a miracle and the scholars realise the errors of their ways. All these stories are allegorical! So we deduce that Tulsidas won a challenge of some nature and the ordinary Hindi speaking people have loved his work for 500 years. Neither did Tulsidas copyright his work  or make money out of it. Yet his name his known till today as the author of that remarkable work.

The work of Tulsidas did not detract from Valmiki’s work or supplant it. It carried the story to a wider audience and it made more people love Valmiki, Rama and Sita.

I guess in the case of Valmiki, Tulsidas and hundreds and thousands of our saintly authors and composers, Copy Left where the author gets only attribution was the order of the day. Of course Thyagaraja comes to mind where he has appended his name to hundreds of Kirthanas about Sri Rama but never sold them, or accepted rewards for them. People celebrate his birthday, even today and love to sing his songs and hear them.

 Are we going wrong with our ‘copyrightness’? I believe that ActionAid filed for a patent on potato chips to show the world to what a ridiculous extent we are taking the patent game. 

Of course, there are those who copy left and right without any credit to the original creators and those who try to take credit for the work others. I can’t help disliking them intensely. It seems wrong to Copy and Petty to CopyRight.

I think Copy Left is the better way – if you cannot help copying please attribute this work to me. I am the  Author.

Satya Sarada Kandula.

Iti Satya Sarada Virachita Blogah Postah.