At the moment I feel like I would be alright with sharing my work openly with people. However, I’m not profiting off of anything I’m working on at the moment anyway. I’m also not really working on a project that I think could be monetized. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m working on anything that anyone would want to use for any reason. Maybe if I were working on a project that was going to be my main source of income, or that I should be receiving royalties for in the future I would feel differently. After writing this paragraph, I realize that I have no idea how I feel about people using my work because I don’t really have work people would want to use.
As far as using copyrighted work, if you are using it for school and not making a profit it should be fair game, like scanning a passage from a book. The practices by some of the academic publishing companies feel slimy. Text books are too expensive especially if you only need one chapter. The one article talked about the teacher who would just omit works she couldn’t get for free because people wanted too much money for permission. Maybe they could ask for less money for the permission. That might help everyone.