Month: July 2005

In a recent opinion piece on PCMag.com, Mr. Dvorak shows off his stunning lack of comprehension of the benefits to Creative Commons Licensing.

Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford?

CCL is a simple way for content creators to let everybody know what they’ll allow others to do with their work. There’s no lag time in tracking down the content creator/copyright holder/legal department and then phoning/emailing/snail-mailing them to find out if it would be okay to take their work and do X with it (whatever X might be). This simplifcation of the process allowing others to remix existing content is a wonderful benefit to the public and content creators alike. Content creators can take any CC licensed material they like, mix it up into something new and put it back out much more quickly without worrying that they’re going to be sued for breaking somebody’s copyright. The public benefits because this allows a lot more content to be created much more quickly.

A bit later in the article, Mr. Dvorak starts complaining about the optional commercial provisions in the CCL scheme.

This means 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?

Provided that the content creator tagged the content as having the Non-Commercial provision in a CC license; then it’s telling you that creator does not want to use their work in a commercial fasion. How hard is that to comprehend? The sad part is you almost picked up on a key reason people use CC licenses but you had to go at it backwards. Yes, a noncommercial site could distribute a million copies (of an appropriately licensed work) for free and that’s a great thing; articularly for the non-mainstream, unknown content creator who just wants to get their work out in the public eye.

Then Mr. Dvorak comes up with this bit of nonsense:

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.

If he had done even a modicum of research on the Creative Commons website; he would have found their page detailing the Baseline Rights included in ALL CC licenses. The only thing “bogus” about this suggestion is Mr. Dvorak’s claim that it’s the Creative Commons folk who are making it. A Creative Commons license doesn’t say you cannot have any fair use rights; it simply says “Hey friend, here’s some stuff for you to play with, so long as you’re willing to play by the rules.” And then it gives you a convenient link to check out what those rules are. Along those lines, Mr. Dvorak complained that the Creative Commons folk could sue somebody and ruin what little fair use rights remain to the public and again a quick look through the Creative Commons website puts paid to that bit of nonsense.

For his next delusion, Mr. Dvorak decides the Creative Commons folks are somehow corrupting Public Domain. I would have thought having a clear & concise document specifying that a work has been dedicated to the public domain is a good thing. *shrug* Maybe that’s why I’m a no-name blogger and not an editor at PC Magazine.

There are several more examples peppered throughout the remainder of Mr. Dvorak’s article. All of these examples could have been cleared up if he’d bothered to do a bit of looking around the Creative Commons website, but probably the most basic bit of guff that he writes is in the last paragraph of the article.

And it seems to actually weaken the copyrights you have coming to you without Creative Commons.

With this one sentence, we can see Mr. Dvorak appears to actually understand what a Creative Commons license does1. I would suppose since he has the basic idea that he does not agree with the concept behind Creative Commons and so wrote this rather inflamatory article. It seems to me Mr. Dvorak is suffering from RIAA syndrome. That is to say, he’s an established content creator who just does not understand –and doesn’t want to understand– the evolving landscape of the business environment.

1 A CC license removes the specific restrictions on the use of your content that you decide do not need to be on the content. One could consider this an intentional weakening of the copyright.

Savage Chickens :: An Apple A Day

Savage Chickens is a webcomic that I ran across recently and it’s rather brilliant in its simplicity. One guy, one stack of Post-It notes, one pen and a whole lot of bringing the funny. This one is now permanently added to my Portal page so I won’t forget to hit it during my daily webcomic trawl.


You’re The Catcher in the Rye!
by J.D. Salinger
You are surrounded by phonies, and boy are you sick of them! In an ongoing struggle to search for a land without phonies, you end up running away from everything, from school to consequences. In this process, you reveal that many people in your life have suffered torments and all you really want to do is catch them as they fall. Perhaps using a baseball mitt. Your biggest fans are infamous psychotics.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I’d finished reading all the books and listening to the CD, I borrowed from the library during my previous visit. So last night, I went back to return all of it and get more. After dropping off my returns at the circulation desk (slightly hampered by an old lady’s cane hanging down over the return slot), I wandered over into the fiction section to look for Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth, Book 4). I first started down the wrong aisle (Goodkind, not Jordan you dolt!) but managed to eventually get myself sorted out and going down the right one.

I got about halfway down the aisle and started to walk around a young lady looking at the shelves when I realized she was standing directly in front of the section I wanted. I excused myself and started looking for Temple of the Winds but it was not to be found. I decided to go ahead and grab a couple of the following books (SotF, FotF and tPoC). As I was turning to leave the aisle, the young lady held up a book (WFS) asked me if it was the first book in the series and if it was any good. I reassured her that it was both the first book and an entertaining read. She then asked if the rest of the series was any good. I replied that of what I’d read (the first 3 books) WFS is the best.

This seemed to disappoint her somewhat and I was going to explain that the other books weren’t bad, when a scruffy looking fellow walked up to me asking for help. He told me that he works for the carnival1 and then went on to explain that he’s not familiar with the Coralville library. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t really familiar with it either2 but he interrupted me saying that he could just tell that I knew libraries and could help him locate a book by Dean Koontz called “Fireball” (he thought). Since the young lady didn’t appear to want to talk any further and I knew Mr. Koontz’s books would just be an aisle or two over; I helped the scruffy guy to find the right section.

When I recounted this story to my wife later that night; she didn’t seem to understand how odd an experience this was for me. After all, I’m 6 foot 5 inches tall and most people don’t talk to me unless they already know me. To me the whole trip to the library had been surreal; but as I started to explain this to her, she interrupted and said…

Oh honey, you just look like a book nerd.

*sigh*

1 Coralville brings in a small carnival every year as part of our 4th of July celebrations.
2 This only being my 2nd visit to check books in probably 6 months to a year.