The Grumpystack Analogue 1.0 Public Licence

This licence is an almost direct copy of the creative commons Attribution-Sharealike license, but with one key addition:

You are not permitted to process, store, or transmit the licensed material using a digital computer.

This means, among other things:

• You cannot post copies of the material on the web, on FTP, or any other digital service.
• You cannot email copies of the material to your friends.
• You cannot keep a copy of the material on a disk, a CD, or a thumb drive.
• You cannot take digital photographs of the material.
• You can take film-photographs of the material, but you cannot have that film processed by a shop that digitally scans your negatives.

You are still permitted to take copies of the licensed material, build on them, and share them freely. However, you must do this entirely with analogue technology. You can use a pen and paper to copy a story or poem. You can use a cassette tape recorder to copy a song or a reading. You can use a polaroid camera to copy visual art.

How To Use This Licence

To share a hand-written poem or story using this licence, I have been simply writing the following somewhere unobtrusive on the paper copy:

© MY_NAME THE_DATE shared under the grumpystack analogue public licence 1.0
https://grumpystack.uk/apl

I can then take that paper copy to places where people can see it, read it, and if they wish: make their own copies. Places like the analogue stories table at EMF 2026.

Note that the licence is not licenced under itself. Just like the Creative Commons licences, the grumpystack APL is public domain. This means the licence can be shared on the internet (and on this web page), and that hyperlinking to it from APL'd material is fair game. You can't share APL'd material using a computer, but that material can refer to things that are shared that way.

Freedom and Terms

You are free to:

Share

copy and redistribute the material in any analogue medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.

Adapt

remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the licence terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribition

You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

ShareAlike

If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same licence as the original.

Analogue-Only

You must not store, process, or transmit the material using any kind of digital computer

No additional restrictions

You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the licence permits.

Notices

You do not have to comply with the licence for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.

No warranties are given. The licence may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Commentary: Some Expected Consequences

We expect that this prohibition on digital processing will likely have some or more of the following effects. These are not part of the licence itself, just some expected possible consequences.

Licensed materials cannot go viral

...or at least not nearly as easily as they could if we were permitted to share them on the internet. Admittedly, if you manage to make a 100% analogue art-piece that goes properly viral, that'd be pretty cool.

Licensed materials cannot be used to train AIs.

If computers aren't allowed to read it, AI's definitely can't. So long as no-one breaks the terms of the licence, there should be absolutely no chance of your art getting regurgitated by a GenAI without your consent.

Licensed materials are extremely hard to publish.

Of course, if it's your art, you hold the copyright, and you can do what you want. But if all the right you have to the material is the right granted by this licence, then you'll find it very difficult to do any modern publishing with it. Modern books are typeset by computers. Modern music is mastered on computers. How many industrial-scale analogue publishing machines are left in the medium of your choice?