Who Owns a Tarot Spread?

[tarotbear]

How on earth do you know that your spread is absolutely yours and that you created it and it was never thought of or created by anybody else anywhere else prior to you doing it?How do you know you are the creator? You may have created something, but how do you know that you are the original creator?

Copyright doesn't protect an idea, only the material expression of it. So, it may not matter if anyone else thought about the spread. If Metafizzypop was the first to write it down and publish it, she could have a claim to it.

It's kind of like this: One dark and stormy night you are sitting around with a friend, tossing back a few Absinthes. Three or four Green Fairies later you come up with the wonderful idea that if you could breed gigantic fireflies you could use them to light places that have no electricity. That is an idea. However, your friend/drinking buddy is Jules Verne and in the next book he writes a group of cavern-dwellers on Mars are using gigantic mutant fireflies to light their world. Verne has the idea in print; it is a material expression of your idea - but he gets to copyright his book and the credit for the outlandish idea goes to him - not you. 150 years later when someone produces light from genetically-altered fireflies they will call it 'Verne-light', not 'someone who got drunk on Absinthe light.'

The world is full of sob-stories of someone who had a great idea and got to the copyright office 30 minutes after someone who stole their idea had already beat them to the office.

 

[Metafizzypop]

To answer the question about the Celtic Cross Spread - no exact source can be found for it, but a very similar spread exists in some turn-of-the-century cartomancy books. Usually it's just the basic cross where one says a similar memonic when laying the cards: This is above you; this is below you . . .. etc.

I'm not surprised there is no exact source. And that no exact person can be credited. I expected that the origin of this classic spread would be shrouded in mystery. It seems so appropriate, that the history of the occult should be so, well, so occult.

It might have happened because people felt free to pass it around. Divination is part of folk culture, and its methods get passed down like recipes or family traditions. It's the old-school equivalent of being blogged and reblogged, pinned and repinned, into eternity.

One way to claim a spread is to use your name in the title: "Metafizzypop's Haunted House Spread". AND include a credit line with or without a Creative Commons license notice.

I was just thinking the same thing! Of putting my username in the title of future spreads I create. For example, instead of calling my new one The Poopiepants Spread, I would call it "Metafizzypop's Poopiepants Spread.

OK, you're all witnesses to this. You all know that this is an original spread, created by me, and you are all the first to see it here.

Metafizzypop's Poopiepants Spread

1. The poopiepants in your life
2. What he wants from you
3. What he's willing to do to get it
4. What he's not willing to do to get it
5. The possibility that he actually will get it
6. The possibility that he will say he loves you in order to get it
7. The possibility that he will say he loves you after he gets it
8. Why you shouldn't give it to him
9. Why you could give it to him, maybe just this once
10. Outcome

1.....2.....3
6.....5.....4
7.....8.....9

10

The final card, number 10, is separated from the others because it represents the poopiepants running out the door.

If that's not copyrightable, what is?

And what exactly is a 'Creative Commons License'?

Yeah, this too.

 

[Chrystella]

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that has released copyright licenses (known as Creative Commons licenses) to the public free of charge. These allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but they are based upon it.

Here's the link to Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/

Licensing a work is as simple as selecting which of the six licenses best meets your goals, and then marking your work in some way so that others know that you have chosen to release the work under the terms of that license.

For my blog contents and photography, I use Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License. This means people may copy, adapt, and redistribute my material as long as they give me credit and are not using it for commercial purposes.

 

[Metafizzypop]

Chrystella, thanks for that link for Creative Commons. Vey handy.

Teheuti, thanks for bringing up the topic. This looks really interesting.

I did some reading up on this thing, and it does seem like a handy thing to have. I'd never heard of it before. Though it doesn't have the weight of a formal copyright, it's still something.

Would I be able to use it to protect the spreads that I have in the Spreads Forum here on AT? That's where my spread was kidnapped from.

 

[gregory]

It's kind of like this: One dark and stormy night you are sitting around with a friend, tossing back a few Absinthes. Three or four Green Fairies later you come up with the wonderful idea that if you could breed gigantic fireflies you could use them to light places that have no electricity. That is an idea. However, your friend/drinking buddy is Jules Verne and in the next book he writes a group of cavern-dwellers on Mars are using gigantic mutant fireflies to light their world. Verne has the idea in print; it is a material expression of your idea - but he gets to copyright his book and the credit for the outlandish idea goes to him - not you. 150 years later when someone produces light from genetically-altered fireflies they will call it 'Verne-light', not 'someone who got drunk on Absinthe light.'

The world is full of sob-stories of someone who had a great idea and got to the copyright office 30 minutes after someone who stole their idea had already beat them to the office.

Indeed. Or just never thought it was worth it. A nurse who was the matron in my boarding school had a patent Not To Her Credit - and she was angry about this; she "invented" luggage wheels - took the frame of a small wheeled buggy and made her own set from it. It was a matter of months later someone patented it - he'd seen her using her device at Paddington station (she found this out when she had gone to the patent office to complain !). She was quite old when I knew her, and used to gripe that she could have retired years ago and not had to see any of us ever again...

But now of course we have cases with built in wheels that break and fall off and...

 

[Barleywine]

The world is full of sob-stories of someone who had a great idea and got to the copyright office 30 minutes after someone who stole their idea had already beat them to the office.

One word: Tesla.

 

[earthair]

And what exactly is a 'Creative Commons License'?

It's an admission that you know it'll be stolen, but you've given up on caring

 

[tarotbear]

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that has released copyright licenses (known as Creative Commons licenses) to the public free of charge. These allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but they are based upon it.

For my blog contents and photography, I use Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License. This means people may copy, adapt, and redistribute my material as long as they give me credit and are not using it for commercial purposes.

It's an admission that you know it'll be stolen, but you've given up on caring

So - once again - it's just rhetoric on paper that no one has to actually follow once they read it - not like Creative Commons has a legal or punitive force to enforce anything.

This entire thread comes down to RESPECTING someone else's work or contribution.

 

[Laura Borealis]

So - once again - it's just rhetoric on paper that no one has to actually follow once they read it

No - it's a way of being more specific about your copyright. Copyright is already a legal thing. Creative Commons allows creators to share their works and define the terms under which they share them.

I linked this, in this thread, three days ago but looks like nobody read it. Probably some of you have me on ignore.

Spread creators might consider publishing their spreads under a creative commons license. For instance, if they wanted to share the spread but not allow it to be changed in any way, used only for non-commercial purposes, and always be given credit, they could publish it under the CC BY-NC-ND license (Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)

More information here - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

 

[Niclas]

I am right there with you, Laura Borealis.

The lack of understanding the matter, combined wit a high willingness to voice opinions as if they were facts, in this thread continues to astonish me.

On the fourth page now, at least some have understood that an idea or method can be protected by a patent, and an original and artistic description of this idea can be protected/is protected by copyright. Some have yet to discover that the protection of the creative description of the idea does in no way keep anyone from expressing the same idea in other words - nor is it intended to do so.

Now it comes to creative commons licenses, a highly respected method with widespread, international use that does not eliminate or diminish copyright, but gives content owners access to standardized ways to control how they choose to share their content, and it is received in this way.

Really.

I am very much missing any thought to the value of sharing knowledge, passing it on, giving it to others (all while being properly credited, treated politely etc. etc. etc.)

I really wonder how much I, or any member on this forum would know about Tarot if erybody before us in this field had the same attitude about knowledge and information and how, where and under what conditions it could be passed on as the one that lead to this thread.

Personally I do not only accept that ideas/methods cannot be copyrighted - I am immensely thankful for it, otherwise I would only know a very small percentage of what I do know - not only regarding tarot.