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Dun Malg, I love you. I basically created an entire Web site to say what you just said. People like you are VERY rare. My wife read the site and said, "but you're a writer, how can you want people to copy your stuff?" And I thought, wow, if my own wife totally misses the point -- a wife who is technology-friendly and talks with me about this stuff regularly -- then LOTS of people are out of touch with the ideas behind copyright. Here's to you, Dun Malg.

Disney has a poor track record with regard to respecting the intellectual commons, even more so than other MPAA studios. If Disney buys Ubisoft, then advocates of the intellectual commons will have to buy Verticube instead of Lumines.

Someone from a public domain advocacy website wanted to use quotes from one of my slashdot posts on his site. But he had released all text on his site into the public domain. I had to decline unless he could change his license, not because I care where my words were used, but because I care that they be attributed to me.

Yes, that was one of my Web sites. However, since my interaction with you is getting lumped into a discussion of plagarism, I would mention that I do not plagarize -- everything I put up there is extensively cited and credited. The reason I didn't change my license for you was simply that other people were more easy-going, so there was no need to pursue your writing.

They should really look to the model that Scott Kurtz of PVP [pvponline.com] and Epitonic [epitonic.com] - give the content away as a means of promotion, then make your money selling related items such as t-shirts, books, concerts, etc. Sure, books and videos can also be pirated, but until they're as easily accessible as music is via an iPod or something similar, there's still money to be made.

Hmm. That sounds like an argument for intellectual property rights. I say that because what you wrote sounds like a slippery slope, people constantly trying to make money off the next hard-to-reproduce thing, until the day when everything is easy to copy and nobody can profit from any creation.

I'm not an RIAA shill -- I even built a site to combat them -- but I do believe that copyrights, trademarks, and even patents have some legitmate use. If someone wants to copyright an easy-to-reproduce comic strip, or an easy-to-copy song, we should respect that. Telling the artists to move on to selling t-shirts is a lame alternative to simply insisting that copyrights expire quickly. How we in the USA will stop the corps from extending copyright forever, I cannot guess. But that's a better, more ethical solution.

SydShamino has his finger on the pulse. He's pretty accurate. In fact, SydShamino, would it be OK to copy a sentence or two from your post for the Respect The Public Domain Web site? I'd probably put some of the text from your fourth paragraph onto the following page:

http://www.respectthepublicdomain.org/what.html

I think your wording is more succinct and accurate than mine.

I wonder if there are any Linux mad advertising zealots with deep pockets to get some ads on those sites, and to generally kick up a stink and get us lots more stories in the papers and magazines.

I registered linuxmarketing.com a couple weeks ago. My intention is to eventually have press kits, logos, backgrounders, banners, and small button images available for download. I also hope to have a small store with Tux merchandise to help pay for the site, and cover ad costs to promote Linux. But it's slow going. I don't really have "deep pockets" so I do things piecemeal as I have time or a spare $100. But this should do some of what you want. I don't know how quickly it will come online. My respectthepublicdomain.org Web site was online within a day or two of the MPAA launching respectcopyrights.org, but linuxmarketing.com is a LOT bigger project. We'll see.

Disney made the Bono Act and bribed the U.S. Congress into rubber-stamping it. Disney helped in lobbying for the DMCA. I don't want to support Michael Eisner any more than I have to.

In other words: I'll wait for the video and rent it, just as I am doing with Finding Nemo , and I encourage anybody who respects the public domain to do the same.

that stupid "Respect Copyrights" commercial

That commercial has more problems than just a bad tagline. Like that it handily ignores their assualt on the public domain.