So no I have a blog I should be satisfied, but I was hoping I would be able to cut and paste things I have already written into the blog, but when I try I get a message that I can not accomplish this seemingly simple task. Oh, it will paste the poem or play or magazine article into the post, but in HTML code, which I cannot read or edit. So I guess I will also need to have a web page.
Over the ears I have published many articles about art and artists, and would like to make them accessible on the web. A few of them already are. Someone in Canada put many of the pieces I wrote for Artscanada over a 15 year span of writing for that great publication, but not all. and now I would also like to put my plays and screenplays on the web, as well as a few poems now and then.
A friend of mine has written a number of songs without music. He would love to find a band that would ask him to write lyrics for music they produce and gigs they perform, but has a=had no luck locally. So I have offered to help him publish past works and see if we can attract a band, preferably a Caribean, calypso-like group, to make use of his considerable talent. I showed him a draft of a title page for the proposed book, and he balked at the idea that we might copyright the poems. One of his songs, "Hidden Talent" has the words: "Hidden Talent/Broad daylight/Need no patent/Or copyright/Need no keys/Or locks at night/" and so on. The title no doubt refers to the Bible's advice: "don't hide you talents under a bucket."
Although I did copyright many things in the past, I did it without thinking. I have decided in the future not to copyright my poems, plays and screenplays. Actually, screenplays are rarely f ever copyrighted. You can download the script of Casablanca, for example, without charge. I suppose it is because screenplays are not "art."? Once the movie i made you have to pay for reproductions of it. I have never received a dime from anything I have ever copyrighted anyway. I would be flattered and proud to have someone pick up one of my recent plays and produce it. That would be compensation enough. Just give me credit as=s the playwright.
"Lighthouse: A Down East Musical" which was a collaboration between Robert N Richardson and myself, is copyrighted. Bob and I have an agreement that if the play is produced, he and I would share 7% of a net profit. As yet we have not had a net profit on the production of this play, but it may yet produce a small income for each of us or our heirs.
We are living in a new age..the internet is the great leveler. The software that enables me to blog was free. If I add to my blog something called "Translations" someone who cant read English can translate it into one of 2 other languages. and this can be added to my blog for free. If my "followers" (a strange word for anyone who wants to read what I have posted; I don't want to be followed, by hope to encourage a dialog) cannot read, I can add a gizmo that will have some one read aloud what I have written. Can you imagine hat that would cost? But it too if FREE! So much for "Intellectual Property" I have been copying other's intellectual property on my Zerox machine for years and somehow managed to avoid prison time.
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