« Rupert Murdoch invades MySpace | Main | Joi on the air (literally) » Dvorak on Creative CommonsJohn Dvorak has an aggressively clueless column at pcmag.com wherein he calls Creative Commons "humbug" ... "This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes." I have begged critics of the system, such as The Register's Andrew Orlowski, to explain to me how Creative Commons works or what it's supposed to do that current copyright law doesn't do. He says, "It does nothing." Okay, then why are bloggers and do-gooders and various supporters making a point of tagging their material as being covered by Creative Commons? Is it just because it's cool and trendy—a code for being hip amongst a certain elite? There is no other answer.Seeking advice from Orlowski isn't going to do much to cure Dvorak's failure to grasp the purpose of the CC, which is a system for proactively granting license to copy and distribute certain kinds of intellectual property. It "bothers" Dvorak that "Creative Commons is similar to a license" saying that "others have certain rights to reuse the material under a variety of provisos, mostly as long as the reuse is not for commercial purposes." Why not commercial purposes? What difference does it make, if everyone is free and easy about this? In other words, a noncommercial site could distribute a million copies of something and that's okay, but a small commercial site cannot deliver two copies if it's for commercial purposes. What is this telling me?The answer, of course, is that the author of the work has decided to license it only for non-commercial replication, as is her right. It's hard to get why Dvorak finds a license assigning some rights and not others so disturbing. He goes on to say This is nonsense. Before Creative Commons I could always ask to reuse or mirror something. And that has not changed. And I could always use excerpts for commercial or noncommercial purposes. It's called fair use. I can still do that, but Creative Commons seems to hint that with its license means that I cannot. At least not if I'm a commercial site and the noncommercial proviso is in effect. This is a bogus suggestion, because Creative Commons does not supersede the copyright laws. In fact, the suggestion is dangerous, because if someone were sued by the Creative Commons folks over normal fair use and Creative Commons won the suit, then we'd all pay the price, as fair use would be eroded further.If Dvorak had taken time to look (rather than seeking opinions from someone like Orlowski, who'd rather be outrageous than accurate) he would have seen that the Creative Commons licenses note that "Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above." Dvorak's assertion shows that his rant is uninformed by an actual review of the Creative Commons licenses themselves. He's also disturbed about the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication... "This means that the item is not covered by copyright but is in the public domain. So what's Creative Commons got to do with it? Public domain is public domain. It's not something granted by Creative Commons." He's right about one thing - it's not something granted by Creative Commons. Creative Commons doesn't grant anything - it simply provides a mechanism for authors to grant licenses. And a work doesn't enter the public domain automatically, of course - it's covered by copyright until the copyright expires unless the author specifically commits the work to the public domain. Creative Commons has created a bit of legal text for dedication to the public domain, and has also given visibility to this alternative. jon posted this at 10:01 AM |
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