Re: Creative Commons

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I'm afraid this is incorrect.  Creative Commons empowers reusers of
content, not its authors (except insofar as the resuser of content can
also be involved with creating new work).  An author can simply add what
he or she wants to a copyright notice, or can choose not to add a
copyright notice.  There is a profound vision underlying Creative Commons,
but it has to do with administrative efficiency, not innovation or
discovery.  Think of Lawrence Lessig as one would Henry Ford, not Ernest
Rutherford.

Joe Esposito

On 8/4/05, Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca> wrote:
> On 21-Jul-05, at 2:58 PM, Sloan, Bernie referred to an article which
> asks:
> 
> > "Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by
> > Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford?
> 
> In a nutshell:  Creative Commons empowers authors by making it easy to
> communicate the rights the author would like to make available to users.
> Different authors may have different desires for their works.  For
> example, academic authors are likely to always want attribution.  
> People who want to share their thoughts on politics may or may not have
> the same perspective.  An author may want to reserve commercial rights,
> make their work available to the public domain, or make it available for
> commercial use in developing countries only.  Authors may wish to forbid
> or permit derivatives of their work.  Some people, particularly in the
> artistic realm, are sharing their work as open content, to allow for
> collaboration. For example, a musician who wishes to share a portion of
> a piece of music for others to build on, can indicate that derivates are
> fine.  Authors can indicate "share and share alike"; that is, go ahead
> and use the work, but allows others to share as well.
> 
> One author may desire different rights for different works.  For
> example, I expect attribution for my academic works, but at some point
> in time I can see myself sharing some of my photos (of flowers, scenery,
> etc.), as open content, so that others can use them for artistic
> purposes if they desired.
> 
> This may sound complicated, but it's not.
> 
> The author goes to a Creative Commons site, such as the Canadian one at
> http://www.creativecommons.ca/ (there are Creative Commonses around the
> world), clicks a menu of rights options, which produces a text message
> or button for your web site.  The user can click on the button to see
> which options are allowed.
> 
> To see Creative Commons in action, check out my new blog, the
> Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, at
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/
> 
> The button is on the right-hand side of the page, near the top.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Heather Morrison
> 
> On 21-Jul-05, at 2:58 PM, Sloan, Bernie wrote:
> 
> > "Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed
> > by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford? Dubbed Creative Commons,
> > this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far
> > as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already
> > tenuous "fair use" provisos of existing copyright law. 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."
> >
> > More at:
> >
> > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838244,00.asp
> >
> > Bernie Sloan
> > E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu