Dvorak on Creative Commons

pHatidic writes "In a recent article, John Dvorak trashes creative commons as being, '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.' His main arguments are that CC unnecessarily complicates copyright law, and that the name sounds dumb."

Comments

Creative Commons

[matt21811]

I've always thought of Creative Commons was a simplified DIY copyright kit. When I create a work (i.e. write in my blog) it automatically is covered by full copyright law. I can't think of a simpler way to make sure I retain the controls I want but still let other people use my work in limited ways without the need to hire a lawyer.

It doesn't complicate Copyright law. It makes it simpler and more accessible.

Re:Creative Commons

[Momoru]

Like Dvorak said....can't you just stick a copyright notice on there? My understanding of copyright law is that your notice is all thats required? I don't think creative commons will embark on a lawsuit for you either if your work is violated?

Re:Creative Commons

[ZephyrXero]

Yes, CC copylefts are alot easier to decifer than the GPL for example... However, copyright law doesn't need to be simple, there are numerous ways to use it, so it should be fairly complex to handle them all. Is he just dissing on CC or all open source licenses I DFLRTFA (Don't Feel Like RTFA)?

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed. It seems to me that it provieds you the full legal text to describe how you want to protect your work - something most people wouldn't otherwise know how to find or use properly.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont need to add a "(c) 2005 Me" thats implied on all you write. CC gives a way to easily give away some rights to others while keeping most.

Re:Creative Commons

[matt21811]

Sure, I could stick a copyright notice on my work.
The problem is knowing how to word one in a way that says people can use it for non comercial purposes but not comercial purposses so that it will hold up in court.
After all, IANAL!

Re:Creative Commons

[ThinkingInBinary]

The point was that Creative Commons gives you an easy way to express your wishes as to what rights to grant people. Without it, you have to figure out the legalese to write yourself, and chances are you'll leave a loophole and won't have the time or money to fight someone if they take advantage of it. With Creative Commons, you are sure that your choices are expressed properly, both in legalese and in English. Basically, if you want to selectively share your works, Creative Commons is like those "Living-Will-and-Testament-in-a-box" thingies--it gives you pre-written legalese so you don't have to hire a lawyer.

Re:Creative Commons

[Miros]

To be less obscure, copyrights are automatic and instant whenever you author anything original.

Re:Creative Commons

[Miros]

That being said, if you truly have something you want to protect, it's always a good idea to see a lawyer about it. Poorly written or misunderstood licenses and contracts have been causing mankind grief since pen was first put to paper. A few minutes of a good attorney's time is an excellent way to ensure you dont repeat other peoples mistakes, and you can usually learn a few interesting things from them as well.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Every work ever created is covered by copyright law, whether registered or not.

You don't have to put a fancy label on it for it to be copyrighted; common law provides the protection. US Copyright law adds a few penalties and rights, but the rights exist without it.

Re:Creative Commons

[RealityMogul]

Ok, so lets say you take a photograph. You decide to put it online and you want to use the Attribution license from Creative Commons, like many people do on Flickr. According to that license, people have to give you credit for your picture.

Now, lets say that I find your pic and I plan on using it on my website. Lets also say that you're like everybody else on Flickr and don't specify "HOW" credit is to be given to you. Can I just assume that a 1pt font is ok? How about a comment in the HTML source. I don't know what I can do with it without having to go through the trouble of contacting you. So how has that simplified anything?

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from his snark, Dvorak's argument seems to be "what's the big deal, anything I write is already protected and my grandchildren will own it?" He doesn't understand that Creative Commons is a way of *giving up* some rights. But without giving up *all* rights.

With Creative Commons, a content creator can specify clearly that they wish their work to be shared collaboratively, which is the real point of "non-commercial". It's not about peace love and sprouts, it's about getting information quickly into the hands of peers. This intermediate status is an emergent necessity, previously unknown to law.

Re:Creative Commons

[russ_allegro]

You don't need to stick a copyright notice on it, it is optional. More info

Re:Creative Commons

[Eric Giguere]

No, it's not a simplified DIY copyright kit. Creative Commons is about simplified licensing of copyrighted works. One of the hardest things about getting permission to use someone else's copyrighted work (and Dvorak's arguments about fair use should be read in light of Ivan Hoffman's fair use article and the realization that "fair use" varies greatly from legal jurisdiction to legal jurisdiction) is actually tracking down the owner of the approriate rights in order to ask them for permission.

Don't believe me? Check out the copyright clearance section of Project Gutenberg. Who has control over which rights is not always clear, nor is it clear how to contact them. A Creative Commons or similar license removes the need (under appropriate conditions) for explicitly obtaining permission from the rights holder.

Now, it's true that the early CC site wasn't very clear as to the purpose and use of the CC licenses. But not anymore.

Eric
Another random blog to look at

Re:Creative Commons

[n0-0p]

Except a good attorney bills by the hour plus retainer, and that will cost you at least several hundred. Which is, of course, fine if you have the intent of doing business based on your idea. But I genuinely appreciate the value of boiler-plate licenses. They are an attempt to bring the law down to the layman's level and not continue paying lawyers to further complicate it.

Re:Creative Commons

[jpsowin]

When I create a work (i.e. write in my blog) it automatically is covered by full copyright law. I can't think of a simpler way to make sure I retain the controls I want but still let other people use my work in limited ways without the need to hire a lawyer.

That's not CC, that's just regular copyright. It's pretty hard to simplify copyright--everything you create is copyrighted!

Re:Creative Commons

[BlackStar]

It's that sort of attitude that spawns the two billion lawyers running rampant throughout the world. There is a general principle, even in law, about intent and whether it is reasonable to expect that a one point font conveys the source to the audience and viewers. I'd put pretty good odds that a jury would say that it doesn't, and that 95% of the people looking at it would say that sort of attribution is being an ass.

The HTML source is a lot more interesting, as it is there, easy to read, and viewable if you look for it. I would point out that the copyright notice on a book is just inside the front cover, and not slathered over every page, so it is quite legitimate in my opinion, as it's where it can reasonably be expected to be. Much like a book, people aren't going to see the © without knowing where to look or doing a very thorough search.

The law is intended to be used and interpreted by reasonably people. Unfortunately, reasonable is subjective, so theres going to be disagreement. But if you respect the author, the work, and the spirit and intent of the law, I think the "trouble" of contacting someone should at least be attempted. You are using a work that is copyrighted in total in the case of the image. In classic copyright law, you need written permission to do that. So fine, don't use the CC, and see how it's so much easier to follow classic copyright law. Then you might agree that Dvorak is being a bit narrow-minded on this. Or at least, he's not acting like a reasonable and respecting individual. Not that he usually does in the articles, but that's his style in his writing.

Re:Creative Commons

[BiggyP]

Creative commons allows you to stipulate how you wish your licensed works to be used, if you want to let people know that they're allowed to use all your stuff for non-commercial purposes, for free, you can do that quickly and easily by attaching a CC license. The automatic protection under copyright law doesn't give you any such benefit.

Re:Creative Commons

[Harbinjer]

Its like he's looking at a parka from a Hawaiian's point of view: "You want to wear clothes that make you hot? I don't get it."

Clearly its not for him. He's looking at it completely backwards, and obviously doesn't understand. Maybe someone can explain it to him.

Re:Creative Commons

[jhoger]

Well I won't give Dvorak a page hit; I don't think he's really a drooling idiot, so it must be a troll.

But I'll counter his argument with one example where CC worked beautifully:

I asked Leo Brodie author of Thinking Forth to allow republication of his book under a Creative Commons license. We discussed different options... he chose a "non-commercial" clause, but allowed derivative works and share-alike.

So what we have is a LaTeX repub and PDF downloadable from SourceForge by anyone. And he is selling hardcopies of the book through a print-on-demand publisher.

A project is in the works to update all the classic Forth examples to modern Forth usage. Also a translation to Spanish of the LaTeX repub is underway.

How could Dvorak be so obtuse? Of course Brodie could negotiate a separate license with each person who wanted to make some use of Thinking Forth, or just sell copies. But without granting additional rights, he wouldn't have gotten the free labor and TF would have stayed out of print and an orphaned works for 70 PLUS YEARS.

The Creative Commons licenses are just a legal tool, that's all. It's like going to the bookstore and buying a bunch of standard contracts. It reduces the time, if any, you have to spend with a real lawyer in order to grant rights to use your work beyond what copyright allows, safely, to a wide audience without negotating with each user individually, one-on-one.

Simple, understandable. Dvorak, you're just a troll.

-- John.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

I modded you down because of your retarded signature.

Cheers!

Re:Creative Commons

[alfedenzo]

The actual legalease of the Attribution CC license actually specifies the mimimum requirements for attribution.
To summarize, you have to name the author and title (if any), and if applicable, the URI and the license. If it's a derivative work, reference what it's a derivative of. Attribution should be with any other credits, and should be as prominant. The attribution should also be represented in a manner appropriate to the medium. In other words, the HTML source would not be a reasonable place to stick the attribution for an image. It would, however, probably be appropriate for some CC javascript code.

The legalease for Attribution-No Commercial-Share Alike can be found at here, with the attribution clause being 4.d. I would assume that the other Attribution licenses would be similar. I am not, of course, a lawyer.

Re:Creative Commons

[Firles]

Hi all, I am a copyright focussed law student, and want to make a quick comment. The CC obviously has nothing to do with copyright. You already have a copyright in everything you write automatically. Mr. Dvorak is incorrect on that point though, there is no longer a requirement that you include a copyright notice! It is that easy! ~Firles

Re:Creative Commons

[Unequivocal]

Looks like I need to add another quote to my long standing list of jack-assery from Dvorak:

1998 Folks, the Mac platform is through - totally.
1990 I think Windows 3.0 will get a lot of attention; people will check it out, and before long they'll all drift back to... DOS.
1986 UNIX is dead, but no one bothered to claim the body.
1984 The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.
- John Dvorak

Re:Creative Commons

[cpt kangarooski]

But I genuinely appreciate the value of boiler-plate licenses. They are an attempt to bring the law down to the layman's level and not continue paying lawyers to further complicate it.

I don't see what there is to be appreciative about there.

Re:Creative Commons

[DigitumDei]

Exactly. Although I guess it complicates things for Dvorak, I mean, he'd have to actually read it.

He doesn't seem to have a clue. For examnple, from the article:
"as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous "fair use" provisos of existing copyright law."
and
" It's called fair use. I can still do that, but Creative Commons seems to hint that with its license means that I cannot."

from the creative commons licence:
"2. Fair Use Rights. Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws."

Damn Dvorak, click the CC icon, it takes you to the human readable summary, click the legal code link and read. Its not hard. Really.

Re:Creative Commons

[Stephan Schulz]

You don't have to put a fancy label on it for it to be copyrighted; common law provides the protection.

Common Law as the common source of British and US law does no such thing. It has no concept of copyright at all. In early times, copyrights were established for each work individually by Royal decree.

Current copyright law, with automatic copyright even without a copyright notice, is a recent concept, and due to the Berne Convention, originated in 1886, last revised in 1971, but becoming law in the US only in 1989. That is one reason why e.g. AT&T and SCO are in trouble with UNIX copyrights - AT&T may have published UNIX without copyright messages before 1989.

Re:Creative Commons

[zkn]

You mean like the 0px fonted part of the first amendment that makes me king of USA for all eternity?

Credits in source is crediting, but a 1px font wouldn't hold up in court. Plus if you are required not to change the picture a description of creater/website/mail and such could have been put in the file by the creater, even on the picture and you would not be allowed to remove it.

Re:Creative Commons

[Excelsior]

If it is acceptable for the user to have to view source, explain to me the difference between the 1pt font source (which you say is probably unnacceptable):

<span style="font-size: 1pt;">This picture was created by John Smith.</span>

And the HTML comment source (which you say is probably acceptable):

<!-- This picture was created by John Smith. -->

Because I don't see any, from an attribution point of view.

Re:Creative Commons

[DigitumDei]

And while I'm on this. He doesn't even seem to understand normal copyright.

Again, from the article:
"Now you just use the word "copyright," add your name and a date, and publish it."

But since 1989 in the U.S., the use of copyright notices has become optional. Any country that is a party to the Berne Convention observe this.

Re:Creative Commons

[tdonahue]

John Dvorak not understand?!?!?!? Oh my , what is this world coming to? Dvorak always gets everything he blabers about

Come on, this is John Dvorak that you are talking about, from everything I have EVER read by him, I would have to say he is the second-most incompetant technical columnist that has ever graced this world.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

A project is in the works to update all the classic Forth examples to modern Forth usage.

Here's a one-line script to do that:

rm *.tex

I wouldn't do it if I were you, though - such a waste. Donate it to a museum instead. :p

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what I can do with it without having to go through the trouble of contacting you. So how has that simplified anything?

Others have pointed out that if you read the license, you do indeed know that. Even if you didn't, though, it still would have simplified things. In the normal case, you'd know that you must contact the photographer before using the image in any way. You don't know if the photographer will allow any usage, under what circumstances, etc.

In the CC licensed case, you already know that the photographer allows use of the photograph, and you know that if you use some reasonable attribution (with photographs a comment underneath it identifying the photographer is common, so there's one automatic piece of knowledge for you) you can just grab the pic and have at it.

Does that mean the CC license wipes your ass for you? No. It is, however, quite a bit simpler than the standard situation. Maybe next time you could remove your cranium from a certain orifice before hitting the "Submit" button?

Re:Creative Commons

[Eideewt]

The idea behind CC licenses is to create an easy way for a rights holder to give permission to others to use their work. As Dvorak so astutely observed, CC licenses only serve to weaken the copyrights you have coming to you. He also observes that we've always been able to ask a righs holder for permission to use a work. All a CC license does is issue that permission before it's asked. Rather than forcing others who want to use your work to solicit a blessing from you, you can tell everyone yourself. That's a boon because, first, seeing that permission right there might put it into another person's mind to build on your work, and second, creative people who might just forget about building on your work because they can't be bothered to ask you will be able to go ahead and use it. It's a suggestion to make use of your work, and it's a time saver for everyone involved because your wishes are posted right there next to your work.

So, if all a CC license does is issue the same permission you could give anyway, then why exactly are they a useful thing? Why use a CC license in particular, instead of just writing your own? Because it's easy to apply the CC license. If you want to use a slightly different license for another of your works, then you can, without having to actually rewrite the thing yourself.

A CC license isn't meant to give you more rights, since those are defined by copyright law and not under your control; it's meant to be an easy way for you to issue permission for others to use your work.

Re:Creative Commons

[cicho]

Yes, and by default it's copyrighted in such a way that all use of the work is prohibited (unless it's "fair use"). That is emphatically not the point of CC. You use CC when you want to relax, not restrict, the rights granted by copyright by default. So you don't have to write your own legalese, which any non-laywer is likely o screw up.

Some have said above "hire your own lawyer". Only a lawyer will say this. How much am I willing to pay a copyright lawyer to draft me a license for something I want to give away for free? Lessig has done a great, great favor to people who themselves do favors to millions of strangers.

Re:Creative Commons

[cicho]

Free and reliable legal assistance, that's what.

Re:Creative Commons

[cicho]

That's a boon because, first, seeing that permission right there might put it into another person's mind to build on your work, and second, creative people who might just forget about building on your work because they can't be bothered to ask you will be able to go ahead and use it.

And the creator doesn't have to bother replying to permission requests.

Re:Creative Commons

[xiphoris]

I don't think he's missing the point; *you* are.

Some (CC) licenses serve a purpose, such as the ones that are similar to the GPL.

Dvorak is remarking that some of them *don't* serve a purpose, such as the one for Public Domain works. Indeed, what *is* the purpose of a specific license to mark that a work is under public domain? Why not just say that in the first place?

His beef is not with the more useful licenses, but rather with the ones that are useless, like the public domain.

Re:Creative Commons

[Haeleth]

The HTML source is a lot more interesting, as it is there, easy to read, and viewable if you look for it. I would point out that the copyright notice on a book is just inside the front cover, and not slathered over every page, so it is quite legitimate in my opinion, as it's where it can reasonably be expected to be. Much like a book, people aren't going to see the © without knowing where to look or doing a very thorough search.

I have checked this for you, and you are absolutely wrong. The usual place for photo attributions in a book is in the list of illustrations; I've only found one book that has no such list, and in that book the attributions were actually printed over a corner of each photo.

Now look in a magazine, which is where you're actually likely to find photos from external sources, and a much better analogy to most web pages. In magazines, you will find that the attribution is usually given very explicitly next to every single photo. It may be in extremely small text, and often it's written sideways down one edge of the picture, to make it less obtrusive - but it's always right there, "slathered over every page", not hidden away in source code.

Re:Creative Commons

[poopdeville]

I've always thought of Creative Commons was a simplified DIY copyright kit.

Yes, that's one way to look at it. I always looked at it as a family of licenses, kind of like what the Free Software Foundation calls "Free Software Licenses." If a license meets certain conditions regarding redistribution -- free for non-commercial use at the like -- it can be called a Creative Commons License. This is why a work can be legitimately called "Creative Commons Public Domain."

Mr. Dvorak doesn't understand two simple points:

1. These minimal conditions have no bearing on other conditions. For instance, just because a particular license grants free redistribution for non-commercial entities doesn't mean it does it for non-commercial entities only.
2. Fair use is not at issue here, because copyright law guarantees (I hate that fucking word) the freedom to use any copyrighted work in a manner fair to both copyright holder and user. For instance, I can take an excerpt out of any copyrighted work and use it in a review. So can PC Magazine, a commercial entity. In effect, the a Creative Commons license grants the user freedoms that traditionally aren't considered fair.

Considering how even a short visit to http://www.creativecommons.org/ clarifies both these issues, I can only suspect that Mr. Dvorak is being wilfully ignorant for the sake of drawing page views to his miserable little website. I'm sure he has a small penis too.

Re:Creative Commons

[Dun Malg]

"When I create a work (i.e. write in my blog) it automatically is covered by full copyright law. I can't think of a simpler way to make sure I retain the controls I want but still let other people use my work in limited ways without the need to hire a lawyer."

That's not CC, that's just regular copyright. It's pretty hard to simplify copyright--everything you create is copyrighted!

Did you miss the part where he said "but still let other people use my work in limited ways"? That's something you have to do through licensing terms. Copyright is pretty much an all-or-nothing affair all by itself. Creative Commons licensing provides an easy way to permit various degrees of non-commercial duplication and re-use, while still preventing some jackass from selling a book titled "Funniest Blog Posts Evar!" without sending you a dime. Please elaborate how it is you think that copyright law alone covers this?

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

The first being?

Re:Creative Commons

[cicho]

Well, you might want to focus harder. The purpose of CC is not to provide a stricter copyright control than you have by default, with or without the (c) clause. The purpose of CC is to RELAX the restrictions, without losing all the rights, which is what happens when you assign a work to public domain. As someone else says above, CC lets you give up some rights, selectively, and you decide which rights you want to give up.

Thanks to CC I can do that without having to hire a lawyer (who may not have focused hard enough on copyright law in the first place).

Don't want to turn this into a flame, but I've scanned through the threads in this article and I can't figure out why it is that so many lawyer types can't grok the idea of individuals wanting to GIVE UP some rights. They all assume CC must be meant to enhance copyright protection, and they see no point, since the protection is already there. It's really telling, isn't it?

Re:Creative Commons

[Haeleth]

Creative commons allows you to stipulate how you wish your licensed works to be used...

While your statement is correct, sadly that sort of phrasing leaves a loophole for trolls like Dvorak to twist your words.

A better way of saying it would be that "Creative Commons helps you", not "allows" - that makes it clear that CC is not doing anything funky, it's just providing a simple and straightforward framework that empowers ordinary people to share their creative works on their own terms.

Re:Creative Commons

[poopdeville]

Correct, but if you don't, you aren't granting the user/reader any rights outside of fair use. This is unattractive to those wishing to give to others the right to redistribute their work, for obvious reasons.

Re:Creative Commons

[Infernal Device]

The spirit of the law is what you should respect, but in reality, the letter of the law is all that you are required to respect.

Creative Commons has enough teeth, I suppose, to make one follow the law, but it falls way short on specifications and standards, which will trip somebody up eventually. At some point, somebody with way more legal ability than myself or you, or most of the people involved in CC, is going to have to sit down and work out all those ugly little permutations covering the various media or someone's gonna lose an eye.

It's a good idea that's only half-baked, or maybe half half-baked.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Palmer?

Re:Creative Commons

[PierceLabs]

Do you know what rights you have as someone who might want to distribute those works if all you run across is a copyright? None. Do you know what rights you have if you run across a creative commons notice? Click on the notice and it will tell you.

The creative commons effort GIVES you some limited rights where you would have absolutely none otherwise. CreativeCommons isn't about saying "hey don't take my stuff" (if all you want is 'no use' then sure, just put a copyright notice on it). CreativeCommons is about saying "hey you can use what you see here - but here are the restrictions".

In one case you have no rights for redistribution and a legal minefield if you think you might have some 'fair use' rights that the author hasn't given you. (What are you going to do, spend thousands of dollars in court to defend yourself?) In the CC case, you have pretty clearly defined rights for limited use. The copyright owner is granting you something that you didn't have before!

How can Dvorak be so clueless yet profess to even speak intelligently about the space?

Re:Creative Commons

[LurkerXXX]

If that's the case, people should never call it 'Creative Comons: Public Domain' If you are putting those limitations on it, it is not public domain.

Re:Creative Commons

[AtariEric]

He's (grandparent poster) a lawyer. If people don't consult lawyers, he doesn't eat.

Re:Creative Commons

[mabinogi]

The trouble is that
a.) He doesn't understand that some people would like to give up some of their rights in a broad fashion, without having to give written permission on a case by case basis,
and b.) He's using the CC:PD license as a reason why all the CC licenses are invalid
and c.) He seems to be under the impression that you have to go _through_ the CC organisation to use a CC license - he doesn't seem to understand that the licenses are boilerplates that anyone can use if they feel that a particular license fits their needs.

I agree totally with his point on the CC:PD license - you don't need CC to put work in the public domain, you just need to say "This is in the public domain". So anyone using CC:PD either doesn't understand copyright or is posing. But it certainly doesn't follow that all CC licenses are invalid just because the CC:PD one is a waste of time.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

If you write for the corps, they have a clearing house to manage requests for uses of your works, grant permissions, collect fees, etc. The clearing house provides revenue to the author/rightsholder and permissions/peace of mind to the users.

It is possible to think of Creative Commons as a free, simple clearing house that allows individual authors to specify allowed uses and gives users permissions/peace of mind that they may do those uses. (CC just leaves the complicated cases where payment will be required for individual negotiation.)

Perhaps what Dvorak doesn't understand about CC is that it serves the user as much as the author. Not only does CC provide the user a painless way of knowing what he's allowed to do by default, but CC also acts as an organized, stable witness to the rights granted so that the user can't be harassed in the future.

Re:Creative Commons

[mabinogi]

hmmm, actually I should probably modify my position a little there.

CC:PD has some value - like the CC licenses, it's boilerplate text that saves you having to write the statement yourself. In this case of course, it's not a license, it's a complete revocation of your rights. Whilst just writing "This is in the public domain" may well be enough, the CC:PD dedication clearly states to anyone who reads it not only that you are releasing the work into the public domain, but also describes exactly what that means.

Content marked with Creative Commons:Public Domain are not trying to put some artificial "Public Domain Like" license on their work - they're saying that they're releasing their work into the public domain, and the text of the CC:PD dedication is the wording they're using to do so.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

In a more recent article, creative commoners trash John Dvorak as being, 'one of the dumbest individuals ever put forth by the biped community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is actually naked.'

Re:Creative Commons

[tepples]

If that's the case, people should never call it 'Creative Comons: Public Domain' If you are putting those limitations on it, it is not public domain.

The work's legal status isn't "Creative Commons Public Domain"; it's "public domain", meaning no enforceable copyright. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication is just a convenient tool to let an author specify that no copyright will be enforced on a given work.

Re:Creative Commons

[cicho]

I can understand that. But if I'm going to publish something under CC, I probably wasn't about to hire a lawyer anyway -- unless significant revenue were at stake, but I don't suppose most content creators using CC expect significant revenue.

Re:Creative Commons

[cshark]

So let's see if I understand this.
A man named Dvorak thinks Creative Commons is a silly name? You can't make this stuff up.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he meant 1pt font in the corner of the photo itself.

Re:Creative Commons

[DavidTC]

Indeed, what *is* the purpose of a specific license to mark that a work is under public domain? Why not just say that in the first place?

Here it is.

Why, does it say it's a 'license' in anyway? Why no, it doesn't, because it's not. It's a dedication. It's a way to say you are placing something in the public domain. That is, in fact, the legal term for placing a non-expired copyrighted work in the public domain, you 'dedicate' it to the public domain.

It also add that, as far as you know, you own the copyright to the work, or it is already public domain, which is something copyright law requires in a dedication.

And that you know exactly what 'Public Domain' means, that you are giving up any rights to it you or your heir might have, which is not required by copyright law, but cuts down on the lawyers.

Yes, you can, in theory, say 'Copyright 2005 John Smith, released into the public domain'. But you'd be amazed how many people don't know what 'public domain' means.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

That's real easy - you could add a link in the image caption that says "By matt21811 on Flickr" that links to his friggin' Flickr page.

You're trying to make problems, not solve them.

Re:Creative Commons

[Big Sean O]

The CC:PD licence does something else. It markets the Creative Commons. After all, if you use the CC:PD licence, you're bringing attention to the Creative Commons as a place for all types of license schemes.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmm, actually you have to give a license to put something into the public domain. There is no other way to let things go into public domain at this time. You will retain the copyright yourself otherwise, automatically by doing nothing.

Worse, your estate will own all your copyrights too, and even if you are a good person, your relatives are all greedy bastards who will try to wring as much money as possible out of you.

Re:Creative Commons

[QuasiEvil]

I guess I have seen it all. Never did I think in a CC discussion on /. I'd be scrolling along as see "Leo Brodie". The CC license doesn't do me much good (I think I'm up to FOUR copies of TF on my bookshelf at work...), but I'm glad to see Leo agreed to continue its distribution under an open license. The book was invaluable when I was learning the language, and I got my first copy from the guy who had my job before me.

- Nathan, professional Forth programmer, amongst other things...

I've been trying to get rid of the spares for years, but sadly, nobody really wants to learn Forth. :(

Re:Creative Commons

[sweetnjguy29]

Not completely true. A few U.S. States (such as New York) have common law copyright protection for some works. See Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc., 372 F.3d 471 (2d Cir. 2004). http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/20 05/2005_02570.htm

Re:Creative Commons

[KLizard]

I really think he's just pissed off with CC 'cause they just ignored him:

(...)I have sent notes to this operation and never received a reply(...)

Re:Creative Commons

[abulafia]

His beef is not with the more useful licenses, but rather with the ones that are useless, like the public domain.

He spends rather a lot of time smacking the others up, too... read the first page again.

Dvorak is remarking that some of them *don't* serve a purpose, such as the one for Public Domain works.

I thought about that, when I first saw the CC bring that out. Legally, it does not make a difference, as far as I can tell. What it *does* appear to do is provide a branding to the act. It publicizes that one can do so, and here's an easy way, making it easier for producers and consumers to understand what's going on. That is in line with their goals. Other nonprofits do this all the time - look at "rain forest coffee", "fair trade pumpkins", or whatever. Sure, others can hit the same goal (grown only by gnomes who hold shares and transported by slavery free fairy buckets direct to your store, or whatever), but the brand is a communication, and it validated by a third party. Trusted proxies are important in many situations like this.

I think there are pro and con arguments for this sort of thing, but at least, I think that is the goal here, and it isn't automatically invalid.

Re:Creative Commons

[geoffspear]

"You may use this for non-commercial purposes". Then, if anyone does, don't sue them. Are you fearing that someone else will try to sue someone for using your works?

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Bill Husted? He's got to be one of the worst.

Re:Creative Commons

[trawg]

An EXCELLENT point (oh, mod points, whereforart though so I can mod you up).

For the last 12 months, I have been investigating starting an online radio station here in Australia. Battling through the licensing has proven to be a total showstopper - I need a license from APRA, the governing body that is responsible for licensing the musical works, and a license from the copyright holder of a particular work.

Now, APRA's license is a 'blanket' license and covers all of their 'members'. When you ask what their members are, you get told that they're the major labels, and you can search their works via a web front end to their database. However, they said not all the stuff they represent is in the database - but that 'most' stuff is. What this means for artists whose music I'd want to play that isn't covered is clear - they won't get any cut of the revenue.

That's not even the painful thing - the REALLY painful thing is to get a license for each album I want, I need to get permission from the copyright holder. I picked a couple of albums at random and sent off a few emails and made a few phone calls (after going through a hassle of reading the back of the CD trying to find which of the many-mentioned companies was actually the copyright holder). I got exactly no emails back and no phone calls returned.

At this point, I gave up.

Running a legitimate online radio station in Australia appears to be, at the very least, an extremely difficult, time consuming procedure - because its ridiculously difficult to get permission to use their copyrighted works.

Re:Creative Commons

[Daniel Phillips]

"I would have to say he is the second-most incompetant technical columnist that has ever graced this world"

Who is the most? Jerry Pournelle or Daniel Lyons?

Re:Creative Commons

[iShaman]

Dvorak seems to be a lot like that guy Andy Rooney from that "60 Minutes" show, where he just rants and rants about why the things he doesn't understand are "just plain silly."

The only answer that makes sense is, "Then don't watch/buy/use it!"

If Dvorak doesn't like CC...then he shouldn't use it. Period.

Re:Creative Commons

[ozmanjusri]

How can Dvorak be so clueless yet profess to even speak intelligently about the space?

Dvorak is a person who makes a living out of creating and controlling content. He has a vested interest in restricting the number of people who can enter that space. Muddying the waters for people who wish to make that process easier and clearer is a clever tactic.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like Dvorak said....can't you just stick a copyright notice on there?"

Sigh. What you, and Dvorak, are missing, is that Creative Commons has nothing to do with assigning copyright. It has to do with assigning the rights you're granted under copyright.

By default, notwithstanding fair use, the creator of a work is the only one allowed to copy, distribute, display, and perform the entire work. A Creative Commons license allows you to assign those rights to everyone, under certain restrictions... typically Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

As to the Dvorak article, what an ignorant bunch of drivel. It's obvious he hasn't even made the effort to view a Creative Commons "Commons Deed", let alone the legal text of a license.

It's so blatantly misinformed that I'd go so far as to call it libel.

Re:Creative Commons

[tolkienfan]

I totally agree. The licenses are prepared by an authority on copyright law, and it's history. They're simple to understand. I don't know what his beef is... OK now I'll go RTA!

Re:Creative Commons

[mollymoo]

Anonymous Coward, obviously.

Re:Creative Commons

[mollymoo]

The CC obviously has nothing to do with copyright.

The CC is a selection of licenses you can apply to work for which you hold the copyright. Without copyright there would be nothing to license. Literally, CC licenses tell you what rights you have to copy the work. CC has everything to do with copyright.

Re:Creative Commons

[RubberDogBone]

Don't forget the time he said Gateway's retail computer stores were the best idea ever and would revolutionize retailing and sell a PC to the entire world+dog. There'd be a store on every corner!

Yeah. Right.

Dvorak says a lot of stuff. He's kind of a living opinion blog. Most of what he says is interesting to hear, about half of it is right. Not a lot different than other news people but most of them aren't so blatantly off the wall. They just manage to hide it better.

Re:Creative Commons

[Hast]

I'm not sure I have ever read anything by him that has struck me as insightful. Typically it seems like his just taking some phenomenon that pretty much everyone (in the business) already knows about and then complains about it. It becomes painfully obvious to anyone reading that knows something about the topic (which is typically everyone by the time Dvorak gets to it) that he just doesn't understand it. Not only is he ignorant but he seems proud of his ignorance and climbs to the highest of soap-boxes to shout it out.

All this for a couple of ad hits...

Has-beens are sad. Particularly when they don't understand it.

And I yes, there are many of clueless people in media positions. That's no excuse for Dvorak to be one though.

Re:Creative Commons

[djChinito]

You don't necessarily need to see a lawyer. Everything you write is automatically protected by copyright ( in Canada, at least ). The burden then is to prove that you have written the document. Here is a trick learned in a class, 1. Print out the document you want to prove that you have written. 2. Sign every page. 3. Send it to yourself via registered mail. 4. Do NOT open the envelope. When somebody challenges that you have authored a document, you can use the sealed envelope to prove that you authored the document at that given date. Since it bears the stamp and date, you can at least show that you have created the documents in that day. If you have a website or dynamic content, you just update your envelopes periodically.

Re:Creative Commons

[utnow]

If you don't specifically put any verbage on your page to legally bind people to only using your work for non-profit purposes, the work gets used and you haven't protected your copyright. Years from now when some for-profit company uses it and makes a fortune off of it, the courts will tell you that it's entered the public domain because you never protected it in the past. Creative commons allows you to license the material without losing it to the public domain.

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously, if you're actually a student, you have an F in your classes, because you don't understand what's going on here. CC, as the gazillion other posts said, is about giving up some rights, and simplifying the process of doing so. it makes that very easy and i'm very thankful it exists. there is no "all rights reserved" CC license.

- anonymous don't-care-about-this-site-enough-to-register not-coward

Re:Creative Commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can, in theory, say 'Copyright 2005 John Smith, released into the public domain'. But you'd be amazed how many people don't know what 'public domain' means.

Not to mention that there are countries besides the US and some don't have the concept of public domain.

Since this dedication states what "public domain" is supposed to work I guess it might work for these as well (not to mention that they provide translations).

And last but not least, these licenses are a way to tell people how you want them to treat your work, even if you know well you'd never sue anyone anyway (at least I heard there are people that care about other people's wishes *g*).

Re:Creative Commons

[TheoMurpse]

That just begs the question -- who is number one?

Re:Creative Commons

[BlackStar]

I see your point. I look at it from the intent point of view again. Choosing a 1 pt font is essentially looking to make the attribution unreadable on the main page. From the view source point of view, it was more looking at the copyright notice on the whole book, where the copyright is noted at the very beginning on the "legalese" page with the Library of Congress, publication and other legal and cataloging bits.

From a technical point of view, I would agree completely with you. I would note in both cases however that it should be a copyright attribution, and permission under classic copyright would be required of the general form: "This image create by John Smith, © 2005, used with permission". That's classic copyright compliance as I understand it, IANAL as is probably obvious. ;-)

Re:Creative Commons

[BlackStar]

I believe I didn't make my point clear when I changed to the book. I was no longer referring to an individual photo in that case, but to the book copyright located at the very start in the majority of cases, with the catalog and Library of Congress info as well as publication bits and notes. That copyright is held in a rather, well, obscure place in realtion to the work, and that's where I draw the parallel with the HTML source.

I can see how I wasn't very clear on the distinguishing points, as I was dealing more with the attribution mode and not with an image in the specific. The magazine analogy you make is actually quite valid in my personal opinion, and that's the level of attribution I would feel is in the spirit of the law, both for copyright and creative commons. It's attributed there, in conjunction with the work itself. Very obvious. Kind of like a GPL license agreement coming up in a license dialog at install. It's obvious, even if you don't read it in detail.

Re:Creative Commons

[BlackStar]

I agree that you only have to respect the letter, but take note that the interpretation of the courts often takes your intent into account when you appear before them.

It doesn't apply to all lawyers or judges, but I got stuffed into a jury for a tax evasion trial in Canada, and the judge, when instructing us, made it very clear that we needed to infer the intent from the statements of the defendant and from the evidence to determine whether the non-payment of the tax and attribution of the value was done intentionally or whether the valuations were legitimate. In the opinion of the jury, they were not, and the intent was to defraud the people of Canada by evading payment of taxes.

At least from that very limited experience, it's not taken kindly to if it appears like you are attempting to evade the law or manipulate the interpretation to your own advantage to an excessive degree. If you're ever up on that sort of charge, and you're going to argue the letter of the law, you'd better hope for a great lawyer and trial by judge alone. :-)

Re:Creative Commons

[Feztaa]

Has-beens are sad. Particularly when they don't understand it.

The problem with dvorak isn't that he's a has-been, it's that he's a never-will-be. ;)

Re:Creative Commons

[cpt kangarooski]

Just to clear things up, it was a joke. Personally, though, I don't much care for how CC operates, though I do more or less like the result.

What I'd prefer to see, actually, is a reform of copyright laws such that basically nothing is copyrighted unless one goes through a formalized process to receive a copyright on a work, and where there is nevertheless a broad exception for otherwise infringing uses by natural persons, not for profit.

This would largely achieve the same outcome, but without the complication of licensing.

Re:Creative Commons

[bentcd]

If you are using CC in stead of paying a lawyer, your are stealing money from the lawyer. You wouldn't steal a car would you? Or a purse? CC is theft.
(this goes on my CV if I ever go insane enough to apply for a job at RIAA :-)

Nothing to see here, move along.

[saitoh]

he's just stiring the pot folks, gotta print something to save his job...

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[BlogPope]

he's just stiring the pot folks, gotta print something to save his job...

Sometimes I think he writes using the "Million Monkeys" theory, about 1 in 10 of his articles is really useful, the other 9 are usually horrible misrepresentations of reality with dubious aims.

Any idea if Dvorak is ghost eritten these days by 10 different writers?

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[chromaphobic]

Too true, Dvorak is little more than a professional troll. Sadly, it's easier to get attention by writing something intentionally controversial than practically any other method, witness Marliyn Manson and Eminem.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[ZephyrXero]

I always thought high quality writing was what got you the hits, but the world just keeps getting weirder and weirder...

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is dvorak's MO. It's how he gets page hits, like a good slashdot troll will get replies.

He tends to pick a sensitive subject, then make things up in a convoluted logic that's factoid and truism based.

For example... "GPL sucks. I mean it really sucks. What's with expecting people to do work for free. How do these people expect to eat? They say they'll go to a 'service based' profit method, but last I looked a service based business was in a cutthroat industry where you're just competing to do the same old work that someone else next door is (after all, they have access to everything else you do under the GPL, you're not providing anything different to your competitors) and prices just go lower and lower, and nobody makes any money resulting in a situation where nobody gets good service"

A paragraph filled with truisms and half facts that could be easily believed by people not in the know.

And for dvorak, he's writing for people not in the know. the IQ-of-70 among the population, the children who can't think.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, if he had released his own work under a Creative Commons license then at least we could republish it and IMPROVE IT.

That's the bit he misses, I think. If I go out to San Francisco and take a lot of B-roll of its famous public landmarks, then release under CC, then some dude in Taiwan can use that footage to establish scenes that take place in San Francisco... The point is SHARING, not reaping profits, which Dvorak clearly doesn't understand.

What's in it for "content producers" like me, he asks. Same thing his "content" provides for the rest of us: Absolutely nothing. It's a way for those of us making independent films and the like to distribute our work without having Hollywood take advantage of it.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[prgrmr]

Some writers are paid by the article, or even the column inch. Dvorak, apparently, is paid per the strawman.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[snorklewacker]

It's apparently quite successful. Once again, Dvorak trolled. Once again, Slashdot rose to the bait.

Why mess with success?

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[Spock the Baptist]

Hear, hear!

chromaphobic hits the preverbal nail squarely on the head.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[prgrmr]

If Dvorak had any real balls, he'd go after a larger target. Like IBM. Of course, if he used the number of strawman arguements, overly broad generalizations, and outright misprepresentations as he did in TFA, the dust cloud from the army of lawyers decending upon his ass on their way to sue him into oblivion would be sufficent to obscure the New York skyline for days. Perhaps even weeks.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[crabpeople]

well i will admit that MM has a shock value to him, it doesnt mean hes not spot on with most of his moral values and societal commentary. Hes probably one of the most prolific song writers of the last 15 years at least.

dvorak is just a dumbass and i wish slashdot would stop posting his crap. eminem makes hiphop more accessable to crackers but I find his music uninspired

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[FLEB]

It's the movie-theatre problem. By the time you're hooked from "They couldn't have." to "Oh, no, you d'int!", the money (or the hit-count) is already safely socked away.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[FLEB]

What's in it for "content producers" like me, he asks. Same thing his "content" provides for the rest of us: Absolutely nothing. It's a way for those of us making independent films and the like to distribute our work without having Hollywood take advantage of it.

There's also the fact that by setting the "free" precedent, there's a whole lot greater chance that there'll be a B-roll of New York landmarks there when YOU need it.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[Inthewire]

Do you know what prolific means?

So...

[TobyWong]

Does slashdot get a flat fee for each dvorak article they flog on here or is it % based or hit based or what?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

They feed each other. Dvorak writes trolls, Slashdot posts them. Slashdot users read Dvorak (Dvorak wins) and because of the entertainment they receive continue to read Slashdot (OSDN wins).

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does slashdot get a flat fee for each dvorak article they flog on here or is it % based or hit based or what?

He's actually one of the better writers on tech issues on the web. I know the slashbot crowd hates him because he doesn't worship steve jobs, or open source unconditionally but get over it. An article can still be insightful and spark good conversation without having the same viewpoint as your own.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

do you walk with a limp after you ride pole like that or have you just gotten used to it over time?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat your words, troll:

Slashdot's actually one of the better sources for tech issues on the web. I know the anti-slashdot crowd hates it because it doesn't worship bill gates, or closed source unconditionally but get over it. An article can still be insightful and spark good conversation without having the same viewpoint as your own.

Re:So...

[drakaan]

An article can still be insightful and spark good conversation without having the same viewpoint as your own.

Too bad this article isn't a good example.

Any fool can (and does) write scathing articles on subjects that they don't (or pretend not to) understand. Dvorak saying (paraphrasing here) "I just don't understand it...they say it's okay for noncommercial sites to post, but not commercial ones. Can someone explain that to me?" is either an attempt at prodding an explanation that he doesn't want to bother with, or such a serious inability to grasp a simple concept that I don't know if he's worth reading.

John, it's simple. A license that says "for non-commercial use only" means "for non-commercial use only". I know it's all complicated (you mentioned that, I believe), but that's the best I can do.

Seriously...if you read one of the CC licenses and don't understand why it matters, or who would want to produce a work and license it that way, you don't need to write about it.

The CC is not a change to the copyright system, just as the GPL, BSD, and Apache licenses aren't. What they are is a specific set of conditions under which you are allowed more rights than those granted by copyright. Fair use remains intact under any of these, not sure why that's so opaque to Dvorak.

As for sparking a good conversation, I guess that if you enjoy calling Mr. Dvorak an insipid troll, then yeah, it works.

Re:So...

[poopdeville]

John, it's simple. A license that says "for non-commercial use only" means "for non-commercial use only". I know it's all complicated (you mentioned that, I believe), but that's the best I can do.

It's simple, but not that simple. Even if a license says "for non-commercial use only," it can be used by a commercial entity under fair use provisions. Excerpts for reviews in magazines, for instance.

Re:So...

[drakaan]

It's simple, but not that simple. Even if a license says "for non-commercial use only," it can be used by a commercial entity under fair use provisions. Excerpts for reviews in magazines, for instance.

...which I said two paragraphs after the one you quoted, along with a few other things. Read slower ;)

Dvorak: -10 Troll

[nweaver]

It is a Dvorak story. Dvorak himself should have a perminant -10 Troll moderation tattoed to his forehead.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Compholio]

It is a Dvorak story. Dvorak himself should have a perminant -10 Troll moderation tattoed to his forehead.

I second the motion, all those in favor?

But seriously, let's reword the article a little bit:
'one of the dumbest men 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.' Our arguments are that Dvorak unnecessarily complicates keyboarding, and that his name sounds dumb."

Much better in my opinion.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Lumpy]

Exactly, every column he writes is specifically formulated to piss off the largest segment possible. it is his job.

Funny part, he has been that way cince the early days in Byte. Unfortunately some people listen to him as an authority of which he certianly is not.

I used to listen to the Leo Laporte podcast called TWIT until leo decided to add dvorak's drivel commentary to the show as a regular host.

I can understand being on the con side as opposed to the pro everything people, but Dvorak takes it to the insane extreme making sure he pisses everyone off.

gotta get those page clicks and letters to tthe editor written!

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[krgallagher]

"Dvorak himself should have a perminant -10 Troll moderation tattoed to his forehead."

He is not really a troll. He just publishes flamebait. It is not like anything he publishes is offensive in itself. It is just lacking in insight and is intended to create controversy. As such, it really is not that different from a lot of the posts here on /.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[mr_gerbik]

Who do you think gave him the tattoo?

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Jherek Carnelian]

'one of the dumbest men 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.' Our arguments are that Dvorak unnecessarily complicates keyboarding, and that his name sounds dumb."

Still not as dumb as Jerry Pournelle though. The guy writes fiction - great fiction when he sells it as SF, and bad, bad, bad fiction when he sells it as commentary on the computer industry. Dumb name too, makes you think, even if just subconsciously, pr0nelle.

ok, let the flamebait moding begin.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[doombob]

-1, Poor Impulse Control

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[rolfwind]

That's not fair blanket statement.

One Dvorak alleviates the wrists. The other aggravates the brain.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the name Dvorak from HCI lectures as long ago as 1987. When I later discovered Dvorak was a person I always imagined he was some CS heavyweight rather than a pundit. In the time between these two events I spent many years thinking that DVORAK was the order of the keys, as opposed to QWERTY, and I could never figure out how that was supposed to be better! Yes I slept through most of HCI and GUI semesters.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Regular? He was on TWIT one time. I hope he's on a lot more.

I love Dvorak. Been a fan since 1987 when I read his magazine columns.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[kpwoodr]

aye!

This post is covered by it's creative commons license:



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

-->

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall ever seeing him referred to as a saint or anything of the type on here. If he ever was, I'd have trouble believing it was a widespread opinion. I know I'm simply not a fan of any of his "flamebait" articles which take the route of trashing something just to stir up controversy, regardless of the subject.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[coolGuyZak]

There are two different Dvoraks.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Compholio]

... I always imagined he was some CS heavyweight rather than a pundit.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/kb/layout/alphaDvorak-c .html
The guy who made the keyboard is a different Dvorak, it just made the revision fit better to complain about the keyboard too :)

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[snorklewacker]

> I'll probably get modded down for this. LOL.

If I hadn't posted previously, I'd have obliged you. Two points if I possibly could. One for self-important whining about moderation, and another for "LOL"

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

"He is not really a troll. He just publishes flamebait"

No, I'm sorry, but deliberately misunderstanding the difference between a copyright license and a change to copyright laws, is trolling.

"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."

OK, the system works fairly simply. License your stuff using a CC license, and people can use it.

It's not supposed to change copyright law, it's supposed to help people deal with the inefficiencies and barriers that are presented by those laws.

Quiz: People tag their work CC because:
(a) they're do-gooders
(b) it's trendy
(c) they're elite
(d) they're hip
(e) they don't mind people using their photos

Sorry, that last option wasn't available in Dvorak's version of the quiz.

"There are several things that bother me about this initiative. First, Creative Commons is similar to a license."

Similar?!? It bloody is a license!

"You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?"

Why is the 2:1000000 comparison needed between commercial and non-commercial? Dvorak is asking whether non-commercial sites have 500000 times as much goodwill as commercial sites, and I'm wondering why he picked that number.

Surely it's more likely that the non-commercial interest will make 2 copies, and the commercial interest will do a batch of 1000000 if they both have interest in the work. So we can rephrase the question "if you don't mind someone making 2 copies of your stuff for a school project, why would you object to a magazine selling a million copies of your stuff worldwide?

Plenty of people don't mind either way. Certainly Free Software doesn't differentiate.

"This is nonsense. Before Creative Commons I could always ask to reuse or mirror something."

Time taken to get permission for something marked "CC-BY": maybe 5 minutes to check everything's legit.

Time taken to get permission for something marked "Copyright 2001, Joe Bloggs": Probably weeks or months, if Joe Bloggs even has the same email account anymore, and he can always tell you to fuck off and you've wasted that effort.

"Creative Commons seems to hint that with its license means that I cannot [have fair-use]. At least not if I'm a commercial site and the noncommercial proviso is in effect."

Why would someone even look at a copyright license if they wanted to copy something that was fair use? If I was a librarian, or teacher, or was just copying a quotation, I wouldn't even look for copyright information - it's irrelevant.

I'm just waiting for Wikipedia to come online again, and I can needle John by posting some CC photos. It's very hip and trendy, you know...

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[cpt kangarooski]

But as it happens, the Dvorak who writes columns for computer magazines is also the famed classical composer, so at least not too many notable people share the surname. ;)

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[krgallagher]

"No, I'm sorry, but deliberately misunderstanding the difference between a copyright license and a change to copyright laws, is trolling."

You response got my attention so I went back and read the definitions out of the FAQ. Here is what it says:

• Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait.
• Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.

It looks like I may actually have had the definitions backwards. I always thought of flamebait as someone baiting a flamed response, not just flaming another person. On the other hand I saw troll as a large brutish mythical creature that attacks anything it sees. By this definition, it is more like trolling for alligators. Dragging your bait through the waters and waiting for something to bite. I stand corrected.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[keltor]

No, Antonín Dvoák is the famed Czech composer and is distantly related to August Dvorak who was part of the team that created the DVORAK keyboard. I still think it's funny that his blog is using WordPress :)

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[hawks5999]

umm.. am I just obtuse or does the parent really think that John C. Dvorak is responsible for the Dvorak keyboard?

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[hotspotbloc]

Tattooing is too nice. I say we brand him.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Dan667]

Well, at a minimium naming your pen name after a keyboard is dumb.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[cdrudge]

John Qwerty just doesn't have the same ring to it though.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever read Ender's Game? Perhaps it's just a game of Locke and Demosthenes (Peter and Valentine) intended to incite discourse to direct toward an ulterior outcome.

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[HD Webdev]

He is not really a troll. He just publishes flamebait. {SNIP}

Flamebait is Trolling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebait

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Compholio]

... does the parent really think that John C. Dvorak is responsible for the Dvorak keyboard?

No, I do not:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156345&cid=131 07007

Re:Dvorak: -10 Troll

[Shaper_pmp]

Flamebait is bad Trolling.

Clever trolls ensnare people in an argument they didn't even realise they were getting into. Bad trolls post flamebait indiscriminately in the hope that anyone will be offended enough to respond.

Dvorak is a bad troll, who unfortunately succeeds because of his high-prestige job as a technical "journalist".

If he wasn't paid to write for PC Mag (or whoever) he'd be living down the bus station in a scruffy mac shouting incomprehensibly at pigeons, and no-one would listen to a bloody word he said.

And everyone would be that little bit happier and better-informed.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Dvorak? The composer? Isn't he Russian? In Soviet Russia, First posts you!

Re:Agreed

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Dvorak? The composer?

No no, the keyboard: try to read the article, and it quickly becomes obvious it was written by someone normally writing on a qwerty keyboard, with a dvorak keyboard, while looking away at the cute secretary down the hall...

Re:Agreed

[timster]

C ydcbt yday co bry xnrref nct.nfv Abe yd. jgy. o.jp.yapf co yrr uap er,b yd. dann urp m. yr o.. uprm d.p.v

Re:Agreed

[ignorantus]

Actually, the article makes PERFECT sense if you do the following:

(a) Print out the article
(b) Change the keyboard layout to Dvorak
(c) Type in the article again, without looking at the keys.

Kafoom! The entire text suddenly starts to make sense! Just like playing heavy metal backwards!

Came to think of it, a simple perl-script would probably do the job just as well, but it would be less exciting...

Igz

Re:Agreed

[Spaceman40]

This is neither the composer Dvorak nor the keyboard Dvorak.

This is the idiot Dvorak.

interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

John Dvorak is accusing someones name of being dumb???

Pot.. meet kettle, kettle, pot.

fo realli yo

[cmdrTacyo]

He's an idiot this is one of the best innovations in the tech industry yet second to windows

Czech

[Anonymous Coward]

He was Czech, you insensitive clod!

Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

There are legitimate uses for Creative Commons that this humbug is missing. For instance, I've released my first novel Star Dragon online under CC. It's a real, published novel, still available in hardback and paperback, by Tor, a major U.S. publisher of science fiction and fantasy. No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out. The publisher has agreed to try it in a promotional effort, the idea being I will make more sales than I lose. Early tech adopters like Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross have been doing it, too (and while I've gotten great reviews both sell a lot better than me, but are more advanced in their writing careers).

One additional thing. The humbug would claim that in many instances Creative Commons does nothing that isn't already done by existing copyright, except be trendy. Well, don't overlook trendy, I say. Many younger people on the internet these days have a clue what Creative Commons means, and know little to nothing about copyright. They may respect something labelled Creative Commons, and that's worth something. Also, it's nice to see that certain material is expected to be taken, and the author's permission is explicit and clear. It's possible to end up in court with legitimate fair use when the author and the user disagree about what that means.

And finally, even Dvorak is clueless when it comes to copyright. He says you have to add "Copyright 2005" to something to copyright it. You don't. It's automatically covered (you can still do the paperwork and register it, but in principle you don't). So here's a guy writing an article related to copyright who doesn't know the law, criticizing Creative Commons under the assumption everyone already knows the copyright laws.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[msmercenary]

No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out.

This line seems to imply that CC somehow limits the fair use that you get under normal copyright law -- a point that Dvorak made in TFA. I thought CC operated within copyright law. Is there a basis under which CC can supersede copyright law, and place more restrictions on fair use than is already available with conventional copyrights?

Or am I just reading this wrong?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[telbij]

So here's a guy writing an article related to copyright who doesn't know the law, criticizing Creative Commons under the assumption everyone already knows the copyright laws.

Not to mention the relative likelihood that Dvorak would ever need to enforce his own copyrights.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[charlie763]

He says you have to add "Copyright 2005" to something to copyright it.

I don't see any "Copyright 2005" in his article, so I guess that means I won't get in trouble for posting the article text about five minutes ago.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[sharkb8]

It's a good thing you're a professor of astronomy, and not copyright law.

No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out.

Just because you're book's still in print doesn't mean that there is no fair use of your book. In fact, the fair use doctrine is what allows people co minimally infringe on your copyright, while the work is still relevant. I can quote parts of your book, even if it is still in print, especially if the parts are relatively short, and I am doing it for teaching, critical or satire purposes.

But you are only partly correct when you state that no one can distribute your book under fair use. If you sell your book to me, and I in turn sell it to a recycled book store, that's legal (First sale doctrine and all, you already got your bucks). The recycled bookstore can resell it, and at a profit also. Can I publish and sell your entire book myself? No. You need to be paid.

And creative commons doesn't change anything about copyright. It's a license, just like the GPL. you still own the copyright to your work, there are just conditions on people using it.

I will agree with your statement about attaching the Copyright notice. I think Dvorak probably heard something about taht in the 1970's. One way to get around copyright for certain works published before 1976 (IIRC) is to find a version published pre'76 without the copyright symbol. Doing so meant it was dedicated to the public. THe Berne convention forced the U.S. to move away from the annoying formalities.

But I agree with you that Dvorka has his head up his arse, He's a frequent understudy in the Billy Goats Gruff.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[focitrixilous P]

I read the Star Dragon .txt this summer, and I really enjoyed it. Most of the creative commons stuff out there is of, say, lesser quality than the big media stuff, but you obviously put a lot of effort into, and made a quality, full length product. If the world had more people like you, it would be a better place.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Miros]

I'm confused. No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out. Are you saying your book isn't copyrighted? And that it's somehow covered under some sort of contractual obligation? Because if it is copyrighted, fair use certainly applies, and if it's under some sort of contract, I dont see how it's enforceable.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Ulven]

He isn't trying to limit the rights you have, but extend them.

The book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.

Without the licence I couldn't give my friends copies of the book. With this licence I can, as long as I don't get paid for it, don't change it, and attribute the author.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[MrPerfekt]

Um. Ok, clarify something for me then.. you say this:

I've released my first novel Star Dragon online under CC. It's a real, published novel, still available in hardback and paperback, by Tor, a major U.S. publisher of science fiction and fantasy. No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out.

How is this different from a regular copyright? Everything you said in that sentence has nothing CC specific that I can tell.

You even admit that your book is already covered by copyright without you having to do anything whatsoever. So, my question is: Whats the need for CC?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Humorously_Inept]

I'm impressed that you managed to wrangle this arrangement out of Tor, and on your first novel at that! Print publishers, even in Science Fiction, are generally loath to look to technology for distribution and most don't even accept submissions in electronic format. Kudos on sticking to your guns and on getting your work published. I hope to check out the book.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Yes, fair use applies to my book, like everything else, but exactly as you say it doesn't let someone copy the entire thing, the "book," and distribute it. That's all I was saying. I'm definately not a lawyer and not as careful in my speech/writing as one.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

he's saying that fair use doesn't apply to the distribution of an entire work for any purpose. You can quote out of it and a few other things, but not distribute it outright.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[shotfeel]

I may be wrong, but I think you're misunderstanding the line in the same way Dvorak does.

Wholesale copying of a novel is not fair use (period). Barring some form of license to copy, its a violoation of copyright law to make and distribute complete copies. That's what is meant by saying "No one can distribute my book under fair use".

The CC licence is what gives one the legal ability to make a wholesale copy. IOW it expands what you can do beyond just "fair use". Fair use would allow you to quote some parts for comment or for educational use only. The CC license allows you to make a complete copy for any non-commercial use.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[cei]

If anything, CC has the capability to extend fair use beyond what is in traditional copyright law. There are CC licenses that allow for the creation of derivative works, which under normal copyright would have to be explicitly granted on a case by case basis.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[schon]

No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out.

This line seems to imply that CC somehow limits the fair use that you get under normal copyright law

Where did he say anything about the Creative Commons in the bit you quoted? All he mentions is copyright law, and his assertion is entirely correct.

am I just reading this wrong?

You're just reading it wrong. He's not saying anything remotely like what you believe he's saying.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Yes, it's copyrighted, and yes, fair use applies. You're not the first to critcize this sentence, so I obviously should have been clearer. Under fair use, no one can copy and distribute my entire book. They can quote passages and things like that, but the whole book cannot be distibuted by anyone but me under fair use.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[msmercenary]

I think perhaps I did misunderstand. The wording I quoted above seems to imply that without CC, one could distribute the book under "fair use" and get paid for it, which isn't true. One can excerpt parts under fair use, and one can review the book and publish it. These are my rights under fair use, regardless of whether the book is CC or a conventional copyright, and regardless of whether I get paid for the review or not.

Interestingly, this was Dvorak's point in his article -- that CC does nothing with regard to fair use rights, but a casual reading would suggest that CC actually restricts fair use when you're getting paid.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[EggyToast]

He means actual distribution. Fair use covers education, criticism, and parody. It doesn't cover "copying the book to people for promotional purposes, hacking excerpts to show the insides, or creating copies to publish."

What Dvorak misses, and I think what you're also confused by, is that CC does nothing to complicate copyright law. In fact, what CC does is ease the restrictions on copyright.

Under normal copyright law, for someone to take a piece of your work and do something with it, even if it's post it in their blog, is an infringement of copyright. If I were to quote your text on Slashdot here and put it somewhere else, say, in an email to a friend, that's copyright infringement.

Now, most people don't care about it. They don't want their work limited, and they don't want their audience afraid of using their work. However, they also don't want to say "Feel free to copy my stuff!" because what if someone compiles stuff they wrote or created into a book and published it for money? How do they make a distinction that they are waiving copyright for people who just want to copy it and disperse the information for free, vs. those who want to turn a buck?

That's one of the biggest reasons for the CC license. Technically, it expands fair use. It says "Yes, I still have copyright on my work. However, these are the things you can do with it that you wouldn't be able to under an 'All Rights Reserved' copyright statement."

CC is powerful because it informs the audience what they can do with the works they're looking at. In some cases it's text. In others it's pictures, or schematics, recipes, music, whatever. With a music comparison, regular copyright would restrict people from putting it on a P2P network, correct? Under CC, the original author explicitly can state that it's OK to put it on a P2P network, or make copies for friends, or broadcast the work. But that it's not OK to press CDs and sell them to people, or put them on a compilation and sell that, or include it with a radio show that is pay-only.

Looking at that, it's obvious how it does the OPPOSITE of adding complexity to copyright law -- it loosens the copyright of the author in a specific and easy-to-understand way. It points out the copyright of the original author, yet explains what the audience is free to do without repercussions. In this day and age of RIAA lawsuits and C&D letters, I find it exceedingly important to have easy-to-understand-and-use licenses like Creative Commons.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

>>No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law, because it wouldn't be, and certainly commercial distribution is right out.

>Just because you're book's still in print doesn't mean that there is no fair use of your book. In fact, the fair use doctrine is what allows people co minimally infringe on your copyright, while the work is still relevant. I can quote parts of your book, even if it is still in print, especially if the parts are relatively short, and I am doing it for teaching, critical or satire purposes.

It's a good thing you're not a professor of English or a reading tutor.

The original poster was talking about other people 'distributing' his work--most people would interpret that to mean redistributing the novel that he had just mentioned, as in copying and redistributing the whole--and you argue that fair use allows certain kinds of use, such as excerpting, for purposes of satire, etc., and allows you to resell the work that you have purchased. None of your points actually respond to what the original poster said.

The first quoted sentence above, which is what you responded to, means that fair use does not allow other people to redistribute his novel for commercial or non-commerical purposes. And that is perfectly accurate.

Also, 'fair use' is by definition a non-infringing use, so it does not allow people to minimally infringe.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[r3m0t]

The CC license he uses allows people to copy and redistribute the entire book for non-commercial purposes.

I assume he has chosen to make this easy by providing the text online.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Creative Commons is a way that lets me explicitly give permission to people to download my book in its entirety and outline what they can do with the book above and beyond copyright law. It's a license, clearly stated. Fair use doesn't legally allow you to take my novel and make a copy for someone else, even if I think that might be a good idea. Creative Commons does, while also explictly saying you're not legally allowed to charge money for doing so.

I want people to read the book, like the book, tell their friends about the book -- and I'm letting a lot of people do that for free online -- so that I can sell some extra paper copies and copies of future books, I hope. Existing copyright doesn't let this happen, and I certainly don't want to just have it in the public domain.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Really good post!

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Cory Doctorow had just done this and managed to sell something like close to 20k hardbacks of his first novel, which is really great for a first novel. I suggested doing it also to my editor, and she agreed to try it. I didn't get the whole book online until the paperback came out at the end of last year, because I'm too busy and slow. I didn't sell anywhere near 20k copies in hardback, unfortunately.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[cpt kangarooski]

it doesn't let someone copy the entire thing, the "book," and distribute it

Well, don't be so absolute. It could allow that to occur. Any kind of otherwise infringing activity is potentially a fair use. Whether it is one or not depends on the circumstances involved in the specific instance at hand.

Properly, you ought to be saying that it's unlikely that reproducing the entire work and distributing the unlawfully made copy would be a fair use during the copyright.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit being a nitpicking twit. Parent poster was dead on and you know it.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[hackstraw]

Under normal copyright law, for someone to take a piece of your work and do something with it, even if it's post it in their blog, is an infringement of copyright. If I were to quote your text on Slashdot here and put it somewhere else, say, in an email to a friend, that's copyright infringement.

Either I was taught wrong in school, or this statement is wrong. From http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/copyright.shtml :

One way to avoid violating copyright is to paraphrase material--to put it into your own words--or use indirect quotes. You should, however, always give credit to the source and refrain from extensive use of paraphrasing or indirect quotes. The copyright law itself, under the fair use provision, protects the users' right to copy copyrighted material. The copying of copyrighted work for scholarship or research, among other purposes, is not an infringement of copyright protection. Furthermore, you are not restricted from publishing (or otherwise selling) your scholarship or research.

I was instructed on how to cite and paraphrase, quote, and use extended quotes since I first started research papers. So, am I now a felon at the direction of my private and public education?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[georgewilliamherbert]

Baen is a huge exception to that rule; they accept electronic submissions, and have released free copies of large chunks of (and quite a few whole books) in various formats.

Eric Flint really started pushing it for them, his experiments (and sales increases) were what started the whole trend off.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative Commons is a way that lets me explicitly give permission to people to download my book in its entirety and outline what they can do with the book above and beyond copyright law.

And this is the value of CC, the thing Dvorak is missing, and something that (strangely, since it's obvious) a lot of people seem to misunderstand. You could have done what CC does for your book differently, the way a large corporation would have tackled the problem: by hiring a lawyer and having him bang out an ironclad license giving people the rights you want.

Instead, CC allows you to pick out the rights you want to give to users from a simple list, and it handles the lawyer part.

CC doesn't add, subtract, or change anything pertaining to copyright law. It's a license-on-demand service that allows regular people to make copyright work for them.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Lifewish]

I'm intrigued - what would be a plausible scenario where distribution (as opposed to redistribution or partial distribution) was "fair use"? Or was your statement theoretical?

I'm genuinely interested here cos I don't think I've ever come across such a scenario.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[sharkb8]

Ahh, you must be new to /. Annoying typos are just plain fun here. And wanking about typos is something people frequently do when they have nothing to back up their argument.

And I'll point out that I was/i> responding to his statement that "No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law". The term distribute doesn't neccessarily mean printing the book and selling without ever paying royalties.

Libaries loan out books, that's distribution.

I can buy the book and give it away, that's distribution.

I can buy the book and resell it for any price I want, that's distribution, and if I do it on a regular basis, like for a business, that's commercial use. You can't seriously think that the Half-Price Books chain is distributing books on a massive scale. Are they publishing them? No. Distributing them? Yes.

In all of those cases, the author has already gotten his money, but he can't get two bites at the apple. Copyright simply allows people to make money off of their creative work, it doesn't prevent others from making money off it too.

As for fair use, it is not by definition non-infringing, it is simply a defense to infringment. You infringe, get busted for it, then claim fair use in court. If your fair use defense holds up, you're still infringing. Fair use just prevents the copyright holder from pursuing remedies such as damages or an injunction.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Humorously_Inept]

As long as you've sold enough to cover your advance! Being published by Tor speaks volumes of a book's quality. How many hardcovers did they print?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[cpt kangarooski]

Off the top of my head, I think that the most likely situation you'd see it in would be situations involving parodying (by adding surrounding material) an inherently ridiculous highly factual work (preferably a newsworthy one), which the original authors had treated seriously.

So now I'm thinking of The Daily Show. If they took a short, but complete filmed interview in order to both report on it and ridicule it, I think they could get away with it.

But successfully using fair use to get away with murder, as it were, while possible, isn't common by any means.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[EggyToast]

My first line states that education and research is covered under "fair use."

If it were not for fair use, it would be impossible for research and educational papers to use quotes from other sources without permission. That's why news agencies can quote one another, why a review or criticism can quote the source material, and why educational works can use parts of the original text.

So no, you weren't taught incorrectly. You were using fair use, but they didn't explain it to you that way. Note how the quote says "your scholarship or research." It does not say "in your blog or book."

Just like how it's perfectly OK to teach a music class and play a modern music track without permission, or even teach children how to play it, it's NOT OK to broadcast that work publically for promotion or entertainment.

Paraphrasing content is standard practice to avoid plagiarism and also works for copyright, as you're using the ideas (uncopyrightable) and not the exact content.

But what you were taught in school falls under the "education" fair use. It's only applicable to scholarly works and those actually pursuing education. The techniques learned in academia for avoiding copyright infringement do not extend outside of academia.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[sharkb8]

They can distribute it. That's what distributors do. So do libraries and used bookstores. I do it every Christmas, my in-laws are ravenous readers.

But no one can publish it without your ok, which I hope involves some filthy lucre.

I don't mean to take you to task for any imprecision in what you said, I was just making trying to make a point regarding the first sale doctrine. And I wanted to point out that distribution is different from publishing. Publishing involves copying or printing the book, which infringes on the copyright. Distribution is selling or giving away the book.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[sharkb8]

Fair use is not absolute. The Supreme COurt has said that you have to take enough of something for someone to be able to get the Joke when you're doing a parody. (2Live Crew case, Campbell v Orbison, when 2Live Crew parodied "Pretty Woman"). But there is also a balance between how "transformative" the new work is, how much was taken, whether it was for commercial purposes, etc.

As I pointed out to the Parent's reply, Distribution by itself is not bad. It's the COPYING, normally associated with publishing.

One example of fair use is teaching, like when your prof passes out a xeroxed article from the local paper. Quoting part of a book for a critical review is fair use as well, as is quoting for a research paper.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[celephaix]

I'm so confused. Why wouldn't the license allow someone to say, throw the book on BitTorrent? It says you're allowed to copy, distribute, and display the work.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

And creative commons doesn't change anything about copyright. It's a license, just like the GPL. you still own the copyright to your work, there are just conditions on people using it.

If Dvorak thinks that the CC license is trying to blur the limits of copyright, he should try reading an EULA. Corps try to use shrinkwrap/ clickwrap EULAs to grab more than copyright entitles them to all the time.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Something more like 5k. I got 5k downloads in the first day the e-version went online on my website after it was mentioned on Boing-Boing (thanks to Cory). Paperback sales are a few mulitples of that, and unfortunately not higher that. Earning out the advance isn't the big deal on a first novel -- the bottom line is whether or not Tor is going to make much money off me and how long it's going to take. I'm still revising my second novel, which won't be out until late 2006, assuming I finish soon. Even if you download Star Dragon and love it, you can't go out and buy my next one for some time. My bad.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, you must be new to /.

Actually, no.

Annoying typos are just plain fun here. And wanking about typos is something people frequently do when they have nothing to back up their argument.

I'm not sure what you mean by typos. I didn't mention any, and my comments were not regarding typographical mistakes. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I was saying that your reading comprehension is poor, because you give responses to things that were not said.

And I'll point out that I was responding to his statement that "No one can distribute my book under "fair use" copyright law".

That's why I quoted that very sentence as the first sentence of my post.

The term distribute doesn't neccessarily mean printing the book and selling without ever paying royalties.

Libaries loan out books, that's distribution.

I can buy the book and give it away, that's distribution.

I can buy the book and resell it for any price I want, that's distribution, and if I do it on a regular basis, like for a business, that's commercial use. You can't seriously think that the Half-Price Books chain is distributing books on a massive scale. Are they publishing them? No. Distributing them? Yes.

In all of those cases, the author has already gotten his money, but he can't get two bites at the apple. Copyright simply allows people to make money off of their creative work, it doesn't prevent others from making money off it too.

Yes. I understand this, but those aren't types of distribution the original poster would be concerned about. His point was that it would not be possible for somebody to download his work and redistribute the creative-commons-licensed electronic work for commercial or non-commercial use, and that stands, regardless of the other types of use of the printed book.

As for fair use, it is not by definition non-infringing, it is simply a defense to infringment. You infringe, get busted for it, then claim fair use in court. If your fair use defense holds up, you're still infringing. Fair use just prevents the copyright holder from pursuing remedies such as damages or an injunction.

Where do you get this from? The normal meaning of the word, as represented in Merriam-Webster's, is something like: to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another. Infringing is when you are actually violating a right or law, not just when somebody says you are. The copyright holder does not have any right that I am infringing on when I engage in a fair use extended quotation for purposes of criticism. If you don't legally have a right that prevents me from being able to do something with the work because of the fair use doctrine, then it is a non-infringing use, since there's no right or law for me to infringe upon. It might take a court case to decide if it's infringing or not, but that's very different from how you're using the term. Do you have some legal basis for this?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[DavidTC]

No, you're being a little bit silly here.

It is fair use to quote someone in a discussion, especially if the quote is available in the same way as the original.

They didn't expect any compensation anyway, and had already implicitly granted permission to have that text copied every time that web page or usenet post showed up.

That has nothing to do with 'research' or 'education'.

However, it's legal to quote people anyway. If you're quoting something that's written down, more than likely you're either quoting a tiny fraction of the work, which is permissionable under fair use, or it was extremely small to start with and, thus not copyrightable.

Or, like with slashdot text, it was something that had no value to start with, and you already gave permission, by merely posting it, for slashdot to copy it millions of time. There may be a technical copyright violation, but absolutely no damages. (And you were copying it to comment on it, so you might even get in under fair use.)

And if you're quoting someone speaking, that's not copyrighted anyway. To be subject to a copyright, it has to be in a fixed medium, and sound waves are not a fixed medium.

Almost all discussions of 'copyright' in education are either aimed at teachers (Which have a whole host of issues to deal with.) or are aimed at students and are actually about plagiarism , which isn't illegal at all, just a damn stupid thing to do. It's nearly impossible for a student to commit a copyright violation in a paper.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Humorously_Inept]

5K's pretty damned good for a first run on a first novel. I've got hardcovers (I collect.) by what I would consider modern masters that had 1-2K first runs so you're doing well if they have that kind of confidence in you.

Have you considered submitting short stories to a publication like Analog?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mbrother]

Yeah, I was getting personal rejections and encouragement from the editors of Analog, Asimov's, etc., and some short story sales to some anthologies and small press magazines when I stopped to focus on the first novel. My editor would like me to get some short fiction out places like Analog (which gave Star Dragon a very good review), but as a professor, my time is limited. I'm going to write a few short stories after I finish the current round of revisions on the current novel, however.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[courtarro]

"Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Copyright © 1996-2005 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. PC Magazine is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Media Inc. is prohibited."

You mean that part?

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[kirkjobsluder]

He means actual distribution. Fair use covers education, criticism, and parody. It doesn't cover "copying the book to people for promotional purposes, hacking excerpts to show the insides, or creating copies to publish."

It should also be noted that "fair use" in regards to education can be tricky and fickle. How much of a work tips the scale from "fair use" to "infringement?" It depends a lot on what type of media you are planning on using in the classroom.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[mollymoo]

Yes, it's copyrighted, and yes, fair use applies. You're not the first to critcize this sentence, so I obviously should have been clearer.

I understood you perfectly the first time around. There seem to be an awful lot of people on /. who, like Dvorak, seem utterly incapable of understanding this stuff. It smells of a fundamental misunderstanding.

I'm wondering if it's becuase people equate copyright with physical property ('copyright violation is theft') and can't understand how you can keep something, give it away and sell it all at the same time.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[greggman]

What's the definition of "commerical purposes"? Can I sell a collection of 10 books + 1 free one (the free one being yours) and claim it's not a commerical purpose?

If there is a CCed image, can CNN.com post it on their website? If you say no (because that would be for commerical use) then doesn't that make 90% of the personal sites unable to use the image as well since most people are running Google ads on their page therefore making them exactly the same as CNN.com?

How about if they don't run ads but have their resume on their site (which is by any logical definition the same as an ad and therefore "for commerical purposes")

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[Lifewish]

+1 insightful, cheers.

I still can't see a judge buying the distribution of an entire book as being necessary, but there probably would be a way to get it to work.

Re:Some uses for novelists, some criticisms

[shotfeel]

May be a bit late with this reply, but...

By default, you have no license and only have "fair use" rights. The CC license gives you permission to do things like "throw the book on BitTorrent". Without that (explicit) license you're open to charges of infringement.

Heck, without that license you're open to charges of infringement even if you think its fair use, and the copyright holder doesn't think its fair use.

Creative Commons... not too bad

[trackzero]

As an author, I like the options that Creative Commons offers me. I can share while retaining different kinds of rights.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Tongo]

So please explain the rights that Creative Commons offers you that normal copyright law does not. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm honestly curious.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Elektroschock]

The Creative Commons set of licenses has more an educative purpose. It reinvents a droit d'auteur style system on top of the copyright system, which empowers the creator as a source of its work, not the applicant.

Dvoraks remarks are troll flames, but what is correct is that CC is more "philosophy" for US citizens who are stuck in their copyright system. Commons usually sounds catchy for lefties. Anyway it has little in common with left wing policy.

The other issue is that Lessig gets famous via CC and sells more books. He is a political communicator with a professor title, gifted and useful communicator, but you have to know that he is no real expert and often he is US "export" as he is stuck in US ideology.

This however applies to others like Eben Moglen as well, they developed their radical views in an hostile environment and do not understand cultural differences, poisoned by the Us system and not really helpful for others because of their unability to discuss, they have convictions and preach.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Peyna]

As the FA points out, Creative Commons doesn't give you any bonus rights that copyright doesn't. Copyright gives you the exclusive right to control distribution, sales, etc.

Please tell me what Creative Commons can you give you that Copyright can't?

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Elektroschock]

As I wrote in my prior post, it has educative purpose:

* it raises awareness of your rights as an author

* it helps you to understand that copyright is no one system but a tool which you as the author can use, it also allows you to dedicate it to the public domain etc.

A copyright system as opposed to a droit d'auteur system puts focus on the person who uses the work in order to make money out of it.

A CC license is like a human rights declaration or the US constitution with its "pursuit of happiness". You can say, well, are you not going to be happy when it is not in your constitution as in most parts of the world.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[roju]

Wow, you're right! Quick, call RMS and tell him to cancel the GPL! After all it's just a license and can't give you any bonus rights that copyright doesn't.

Jackassery aside, the CC provides licenses that a creator can easily apply to their work. This provides an easy to understand approach to licensing, both for the "creator" and "users".

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Peyna]

it also allows you to dedicate it to the public domain etc.


Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know I needed CC to do that.

Here watch this:

Everything contained in this comment is given to the public domain by its author.

Wow. That was difficult.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[JimTheCactus]

I'd suggest that he's partially right. And this itself is the fundamental issue with his complaint. Typically the provisions of a given product's license are unspecified (except in the software industry) and as a consequence, if you want to do anything (even within fair use) you basically end up hiring a lawyer just to do simple basic things. The whole idea of the creative commons license is that by labeling what is acceptable and unacceptable in clear, uncomplicated language, the author can clearly state exactly what you don't have to call them for. This simplifies the nature of copyright, and takes the rather shadowy part of copyright law out. As for the infinite non-commercial zero commercial licensing process, I would think it important to note that this covers more than just Fox News quoting a blog. More importantly, this covers things like compilation and other derivatives. For example, an artist releases an image to the public. Then a publisher picks it up and includes it in a book of "Great Art of the Early 21st Century" Under a "full public" license, the bookseller could do nothing but compile these open licensed works into a document and having done little creatively on their own, reap strong profits with no royalties to the artists... ... Artists whose commercial viability is impaired by this new book. (They too where going to compile their works and publish it) By enforcing a commercial limitation, these artists can allow people to enjoy their work, while simultaneously reserving the right to produce all associated merchandise. This allows them to be commercially lucrative without being exclusive. Everyone can see your art, but if they want the wall scroll, they've got to pay.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[ComputerSlicer23]

Creative Commons doesn't give you any bonus rights that copyright doesn't.

Who is "you" in that sentence? "A content producer", yes, that is true. The reason you choose to use a CC license, is precisely because you want to give up rights to the consumers so they can use your works in specific ways with explicit permission. They don't have to ask you personally, they have a very good idea of exactly what is allowed because of the CC license without having to contact you. A lot of the goal of the CC licenses are because who a copyright holder is legally, and what they will allow can be lost to the sands of time. 30 years from now, it'll be really hard to find me or the inheritors of my copyrights. So if you find something clever I create today, you'll have to wait until 75 years after I die to publish it. First you'll have to find me, then prove I died. Then prove when I wrote something. Then you'll have to wait a really long time. If I have no problem with non-commerical use of it during my lifetime a CC license makes a lot of sense.

If "You" is the content consumer, you now have lots of rights you didn't have if they put them under "All Rights Reserved". There you would have only fair use. You still have that under a CC license. Fair use, is when copyright rules essentially can be ignored, you can do things that copyright specifically prohibits if you fall under fair use provisions.

The "Creative Commons Licenses", are nothing more then pre-canned license that accomplish common desires of content creators.

Just like the GPL doesn't accomplish anything that copyright doesn't. Both the GPL and the Creative Commons Licenses are there to allow a content creator to give rights to the "consumers" of their works, that marking something "(C) 2005 All rights Reserved" would disallow them from doing.

They also do this using a common license. There is power in using common licenses. First it helps to establish legal precendence that on exactly the same licensing terms. So legally, I don't have to be an expert, if I forget to cross a 'T', or dot my 'i', I'm screwed. I'd much rather use one that has been reviewed by lots of legal experts, and used by lots of other people. Those people are likely to come to my aid, if my case ever would set bad legal precedent for protections they want.

I can put anything I want under a CC license, and everyone still has all of the same fair use rights as if I used "All Rights Reserved" as my copyright license.

The only thing Dvorak said that made any sense at all, is that "CC: Public Domain" is silly. However, it's consistant, so I why they list it as one of their licenses. Even if it is silly, there's still no harm in it legally that I'm aware of.

Kirby

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[EggyToast]

Creative Commons removes some of the constraints of copyright that the author doesn't wish to place on the content in question. Copyright is the whole kit & caboodle. Creative Commons clarifies and relaxes that to a more specific set of rights.

It does nothing to remove copyright. It simply clarifies what users/consumers can do with the work that they wouldn't be able to do under an "All Rights Reserved" system.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Knuckles]

Dvorak has completely messed up your grasp of the matter at hand :)

It's not so much about HIS rights (well, that too), but more it's about everybody else's rights.

He wants to give his readers more rights than copyright does (like distributing complete copies), even when fair use is taken into consideration (complete copies are not covered by fair use), while retaining some rights (distributing for money, attribution).

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[Kynmore]

But now you've given it to the public domian, if someone makes money off it, it's nto as easy to after them as it would be if you had ©©'d it under crative commons. I could be wrong though.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[cicho]

Creative Commons lets the creator give more rights to users than users normally have under standard copyright. And by using the boilerplate, designed by lawyers who really know copyright law, the creator saves cash and trouble.

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[ComputerSlicer23]

You clearly have no concept of public domain. If you put something into the public domain, you lose all rights and control of it.

The only reason you could possibly want to be explicit about having put it into the public domain, so that someone doesn't take your work and then attempt to copyright it later, and possibly come after you or others for using the works you have created. I believe that is why the BSD license requires that you leave in their copyright notice, so it's blantantly obvious when you have taken something someone else wrong and attempted to then copyright it as if you had created it.

I always find Disney's take on this odd. They take things out of the public domain, and then generate copyrighted works. They'll go after lots of people for then using the same original source materials they did. Try publishing anything vaguely related to "Aladdin", or "Snow White", and see how far you get before Disney sends a legal notice to you.

Kirby

Re:Creative Commons... not too bad

[mstone]

Discussions like this would be less confusing if people referred to the documents in question as the Creative Commons Licenses. That's what they are: Licenses.

The breakdown runs like so:

• Copyright law assigns certain rights to the creator of a work.
• The CCLs explain how the creator wants to use those rights.

Licenses are important because we need some kind of legal document to fill the gap between, "no one is allowed to use this work but me," and "I hereby give up my rights to this work entirely." Licenses more or less boil down to, "I'm definitely holding onto the right to sue people, I'm just not going to sue you."

Usually, copyright holders hand out licenses to use the work in exchange for money. The document that lays out the exact details of that exchange is called a 'contract' because each party hands something over to the other.. one side supplies a big-bag-o-cash, the other supplies a license. Licenses can exist outside of a contract, though. As a copyright holder, I can exercise my rights any way I darn well please, and if I decide not to sue people who use my work, that's my decision.

Now, if I stand up and make a public declaration that I will not sue anyone who uses my work while wearing a green bowtie on a rainy Tuesday in Berlin, the courts will treat that statement as a binding license. If I try to sue somebody who can prove that they were wearing a green bowtie on a rainy Tuesday in Berlin, I'm gonna lose. If the courts ruled any other way, it would be way too easy for IP owners to trap people.

Thing is, writing a good IP license is tricky. It's generally the kind of thing you pay an IP lawyer a whole lot of money to do. The CCLs are just generic, check-the-appropriate-box licenses that have been written by people who know what they're talking about. Functionally, they're no different from the DIY legal kits you can get from www.nolo.com or the standard fill-in-the-blank contracts you'll find in any business.

The important thing the CCLs do is create nice, clean, well-defined boundaries between various kinds of IP use. As a creator, I can state cleanly and clearly whether I want to allow commercial or noncommercial use, attributed or unattributed use, and whether I do or don't want to allow other people to create derivative works.

And that's important, because if the license doesn't exist, or isn't written out clearly, the person who ultimately controls the rights will be the one with the most expensive IP lawyer.

John C. Dvorak is a complete and utter butthole

[Anonymous Coward]

but I like his keyboard layout.

Re:John C. Dvorak is a complete and utter butthole

[helfen]

Dvorak (inventor of Dvorak Simplified Keyboard) died in 1975 you insensitive clod!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Dvorak

Did John not actually read the license?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple -- pick and choose your restrictions: attribution required, non-commercial only, and no-derivative works. It's great for photographers who want to share pictures (see Flickr.com), want to allow people to use them as wallpaper without asking etc, but don't want things sold. Mr. D missed reading the license fully, which I imagine would be due to low intellect on his part.

Re:Did John not actually read the license?

[intheory]

Furthermore, has he actually read copyright law? He writes:

If I write something on my blog, for example, and decide not to cover it with the general copyright notice, I can simply say that it is in the public domain and be done with it.

Well, that much is correct. And if he had any idea what CC did, he'd realize that telling people if your blog, e.g., is in the public domain, is exactly what CC does. It provides a uniform, readily understandable method for identifying works as public domain, or not.

I do not need permission from Creative Commons, nor do I need to mention Creative Commons or anything else. It's in the public domain by my personally allowing it to be so. This is my right! I don't need a middleman--a Creative Commons Commissar--to approve my decision. And yet there is this perception that I do.

Um, no, I don't believe that is the perception that CC gives visitors...even upon cursory examination, it is clear to me that CC simply provides a free service to those of us who aren't adept at crafting IP legalese but want to license our work.

What a maroon. Maybe he is backing some other group and just wanted to take potshots at CC. Who knows.

Re:Did John not actually read the license?

[Fordiman]

More likely, he's old, crotchety, and makes money by being old and crotchety at things that will piss slashdotters off.

I mean, c'mon, it's all about the ad revenues. PC Mag can handle the hits from being slashdotted, and every time Dvorak posts something <i>intentionally</i> ignorant, every slashdotter in the world goes and looks.

IE: Dvorak, the man who brought me some of my favorite little DOS 7 tidbits, and earlier, bits of debug assembler, is no longer sufficiently in the loop to write sensible articles, but he still needs to live. So he makes money off of being an educated idiot for a tech mag - because techs HATE educated idiots.

Re:Did John not actually read the license?

[Knuckles]

telling people if your blog, e.g., is in the public domain, is exactly what CC does. It provides a uniform, readily understandable method for identifying works as public domain, or not.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!!
Posting number threehundredsomething in this story and still wrong.

CC lets you choose terms, like attribution or not, commercial use allowed or not, etc., over all giving you a choice from 11 license, ranging from essentially public domain (no attribution, no copyleft, commercial allowed) to all kinds of special arrangements.
Thus it is not what you think it is.

Call me crazy...

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

But do you think Dvorak thinks that Creative Commons is dumb? Its kinda hard to tell from his article...

</sarcasm>

Get over yourself, John.

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

I mean my grandkids will own all my writing exclusively until 75 years after I'm dead,

Oooooooh...lucky, lucky grandkids. Imagine owning the collected works of the great John Dvorak...that and a quarter will buy you half a candy bar.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[intheory]

Isn't it 35 years once the original owner dies? Maybe I'm just reading this wrong...or maybe he did.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[dvdeug]

It's only 70 years, for what that's worth. And why does he think his grandkids will own anything; it looks to me unless he's got a sweet contract, PCMag and friends will own everything.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get a candy bar for fifteen cents.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[rbarreira]

A quarter is 25 cents right? Or is the name quarter a false-friend?

You're saying his articles are worth 5 cents?

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[SatanicPuppy]

It can be renewed for another 35 years. I don't know where the extra 5 comes from.

--SP

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[rdmiller3]

Obviously, John Dvorak doesn't realize that no one can really "own" information unless they keep it completely to themselves.

As soon as something is published, there is no practical means of controlling it; and if you don't control it, then you don't "own" it.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was suggesting that John Dvorak's collected works would have a market value of less than zero.

That is, you'd have to pay someone ten cents to take them away from you know.

You know, like trash.

I suggested:
$0.25 + worksofdvorak = $0.15 cost(candybar)

That is, worksofdvorak = -$0.10.

Sorry, I was trying to make a joke.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[pinchhazard]

Dvorak's articles are worth negative ten cents, guy.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[biglig2]

Actually, in 75 years, a candy bar will probably cost $100, but I see your point.

If Dvorak is so protective about Fair Use, what is he doing about the DMCA, legislation which seems to me to make it illegal to resist media companies if they try to stop you invoking your fair use rights.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You can't get a candy bar for fifteen cents.

You can get fifty cent candies. They taste like shit though...

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[rbarreira]

No, he said half a candy bar originally. But I think I made a mistake somewhere too :)

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[elgatozorbas]

And it's even worse than that: 25ct plus his works would only buy you half a candybar. This means his collected works are worth -17.5ct.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[rbarreira]

No, he said half a candy bar originally. But I think I made a mistake somewhere too :)

(of course I understood what you mean, I just felt like being pedantic :P)

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Scooby Snacks]

Try Title 17, Chapter 3, 302 instead. Chapter 2, 203 deals with duration of licenses, not copyrights.

This clause primarily affects the music industry. The artists get their music "back" from the labels after 35 years. As a side note, remember the story a while back about the Congressional secretary slipping in a provision defining music as being works-for-hire? He claimed that it was simply an editorial change that clarified existing practice when in fact it drastically altered the way things currently work. He was later offered a lucrative job by one of the labels or the RIAA.

In any case, Mr. Dvorak was wrong. (What else is new?) It's life plus 70, not life plus 75.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Scooby Snacks]

You're confusing this with the way copyright originally worked in this country. It used to be a term of 14 years, with an optional 14-year renewal. Then it was changed to a term of 28 years, with on optional 14-year renewal. (It might have been the other way around.) Then it was changed to a 28-year term with the optional 28-year renewal. After that, they started extending the term willy-nilly. See my other comment for more info.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[schon]

You can get fifty cent candies. They taste like shit though...

Well never mind then. I can get stuff for free that tastes like shit.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[pinchhazard]

Yes, you are being quite thick.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Scooby Snacks]

Clarification: I was correct: The initial term was extended to 28 years, and the renewal period was 14 years.

Source: Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity . New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2004.

See page 134 for the specific reference; start at page 133 for a discussion on the history of copyright in the US.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[Anonymous Coward]

No wait, this is a good thing. Dvorak using standard copyright means no one can copy his works...so ONLY his grandkids will have to suffer through it.

Re:Get over yourself, John.

[schmobag]

The thing is though, his grandkids won't own his writing. In fact, Dvorak doesn't even own it, which he would know if he scrolled to the bottom of his own article:

Copyright © 1996-2005 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. PC Magazine is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Media Inc. is prohibited.

I made Front Page

[pHatidic]

My first ever front page article. Time to start drinking! :)

Re:I made Front Page

[minus_273]

Bluto: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder. He's pre-med.

Re:I made Front Page

[Anonymous Coward]

You may need to start drinking more, read the /. posts and realize your article sucks... If I could mod articles.. you'd have -10 SuckBait.

Re:I made Front Page

[lpangelrob]

Is it a shot per accepted article you wrote, a shot per +4 Funny, or a shot per Dvorak article on /.?

Or a shot for every dupe?

Heck, this could become the world's largest drinking game!

Re:I made Front Page

[slavemowgli]

Hey, it's a Dvorak story. Those *always* get front-paged, because everybody likes to get mad at and/or make fun of that ranting idiot (me included).

Still, congrats! :)

Re:I made Front Page

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations fellow /.er ;-)

Re:I made Front Page

[Momoru]

Other ways to get a front page article on slashdot:

1) Mention Google....is it rumored that Google may buy a company that searches pictures of toenails online? Front page baby.

2) Link to any article proposing a bug or flaw with anything Microsoft. Some 15 year old writes a blog saying he thinks the next version of Windows has "a bajillion security holes"? That's not only front page material, you're maybe even looking at duped front page material

3) Paul Graham wrote an article about his flower garden, and how he's a "hacker" for using fertilizer? You know that baby is front page material.

I'm sure i'm missing some others here....

Re:I made Front Page

[SengirV]

I've had plenty of front page articles. It's just that I submitted them way in advance of their ever appearing on the front page, and they attributed it to another person. But dammit, I submitted it first, so they were mine.

Re:I made Front Page

[Anonymous Coward]

"My first ever front page article. Time to start drinking!

I think the correct time to start was before you read Dvorak's article...

Re:I made Front Page

[tgd]

You forgot the most important and easiest way to get on the front page:

Read yesterdays articles and resubmit one!

Guaranteed to work, or your money back!

Re:I made Front Page

[Hortensia Patel]

I'm sure i'm missing some others here....

Well, yes.

4) Change your name to Roland Piquepaille.

Re:I made Front Page

[ceeam]

Well, seemingly, last time (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/23572 12) you were drinking till anesthesia and don't recall it, huh? :)

Creative Commons Humbug Humbug

[91degrees]

Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy article written by John C. Dvorak? Dubbed Creative Commons Humbug, this article is some sort of secondary ramble that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous "fair balance" provisos of existing journalism. This is one of the dumbest stories ever put forth by the computer press. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes

CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[intheory]

Other than the blog software than allows so many to take part in the wonderful world of information sharing, Creative Commons is one of the most important developments to really help people create, share, and improve without the expense or fear of complicated and cash-mongering copyright lawyers and the like. Dvorak probably just Doesn't Get It, as usual, and as others have said, is simply trolling for attention.

What happened to the days when journalists knew a little about what they were writing about? Did they end the day bloggers started mopping the floor with has-beens at the NYTimes et. al.?

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[NineNine]

What happened to the days when journalists knew a little about what they were writing about? Did they end the day bloggers started mopping the floor with has-beens at the NYTimes et. al.?

Lumping bloggers in with journalists is insulting to journalists who spend great time and money and effort to become journalists. I wrote a document in Word, did, "Save as web page". Does that make me a Computer Scientist or even a "Programmer"? Notice how Dvorak at least did a little bit of research? Notice how the grammar and punctuation is correct? Notice how people actually *read* what he writes? That makes him a journalist. Bloggers are people deluded into thinking that their lives actually matter, or people care to hear what they have to say. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but you were the one that said that bloggers "mopped the floor with" NY Times reporters.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[intheory]

NineNine, pardon me if I hit a sore spot by using some hyperbole in my comments. I don't mean to infer, but probably did, that bloggers are journalists any more than Word users are programmers.

What I meant to say is that I cannot comprehend Dvorak's choice to call CC "eye-rolling dumb," to the point of questioning his real grasp on the real issues intellectual property, especially in regards to the global creative community.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[Peyna]

Newsflash:

You can produce works, copyright them, distribute them, license them, share them, etc. without needing Creative Commons or a lawyer.

I know it's difficult to grasp this concept, but you see, copyright exists without Creative Commons, and all they do is provide a fancy way to license your work. They're not giving you anything you don't already have. Copyright takes care of all of this, they just found a little way to sneak their foot in the middle of something and get publicity for themselves.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[intheory]

"sneak their foot in" infers some sort of mischievous intentions. It seems to me that Lessig and others percieved the immense benefit of having an accessible public/fair use policy for the millions of creatives connected via the Internet, and wanted to help them share their works and avoid a malignant litigious whirlwind sweeping across the Web.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[angusmci]

intheory writes

Dvorak probably just Doesn't Get It, as usual

It's almost a validation of Creative Commons that Dvorak Doesn't Get It. I've read an awful lot of stupid articles by that man over the years, many of which poured similar scorn on useful ideas or products. By this point, I'd be profoundly suspicious of anything that Dvorak did hail as a good idea.

As someone who has content to share, I appreciate that Creative Commons offers a simple, intelligible way for me to offer people usage rights that go beyond what's allowed by fair use (this is the first key point that Dvorak manages to miss) but doesn't require ceding all control over my 'works' (as putting it in the public domain would). CC's choice of licenses aren't for everyone, but they've done a good job of making available some useful alternatives that are straightforward to adopt and interpret and don't require any lawyers to get involved.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[Knuckles]

Notice how Dvorak at least did a little bit of research?

Please show where in the article he demonstrate anything remotely like this. He didn't.

Re:CC is an important part of the IP revolution

[Knuckles]

It has been explained a million times in the comments already (is this Dvorak himself posting under 50 aliases?), but here we go again.

Copyright gives the copyright holder _all_ rights, some minor uses are covered by fair use. The "user" has no distribution rights at all (and fair use is very different per legislation, and easy to disagree over)

Now the thing you have to grasp is this: CC is not about giving the creator/owner rights than he has under copyright, it is about the creator giving the "users" more rights than they have under copyright.

The owner might _want_ the user have the right to create complete copies for noncommercial distribution, but with attribution to the owner, and only unchanged. How does he do that with simple copyright? He can't, unless he pays a lawyer to craft a license.

CC makes this easier by giving boilerplate licenses to use for several combinations of rights the owner wants to give to the user.

I am seriously astonished that user id 14792 does not immediately grasp the concept. It is just as GPL, BSD, X, Artistic, whatever free or open software license, just organized in a way that the owner can combine what he wants with a few clicks.

Dvorak...

[Anonymouse Cownerd]

... sounds dumb too.

Re:A response

[0110011001110101]

Hay is for horses, save it, cause you're a jackass.

Hey, I like it.

smell that? it's my Karma burning.

Coming from Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and that the name sounds dumb.

Coming from a guy whose lastname seems to bare more resemblance with a Klingon name than human, I guess we can take this with a grain of salt.

Re:Coming from Dvorak

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Coming from a guy whose lastname seems to bare more resemblance with a Klingon name than human, I guess we can take this with a grain of salt.

He supplies the Klingon name, you supply the Klingon grammar.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dvorak needs to up his page hits and figures that bashing the Creative Commons is probably a good way to do it. Also knows that /., other techie sites and the blogsphere will be sure to post his article wide and far to ensure he gets those page his.

Seriously, you think someone who's been writing columns for this long doesn't realize exactly what response he's going to get? (In a word: LOTS!) By /. even posting this, he's being encouraged to post more rants in the future.

But hey, it's fun to bash him, right? Attack away!

glass houses

[winkydink]

His main arguments are that CC unnecessarily complicates copyright law, and that the name sounds dumb

So does Dvorak

http://slashdvorak.org/

[The Bubble]

Why does slashdot time and time again reward Dvorak's senseless grumblings with links and an enormous readership? Until he has something worthwhile to say, we should stop supporting his constant dissidence. From where I sit, this guy is nothing more than a flamer.

Re:http://slashdvorak.org/

[pclminion]

Are you actually suggesting that the majority of us read the article?

Re:http://slashdvorak.org/

[The Bubble]

Are you actually suggesting that the majority of us read the article? If you mean the community-contributing, true nerd, posting kind of slashdot readers, then no, of course not. But if you mean the script-kiddie, 1337, haxx0r, my-homepage-is-slashdot-because-I-think-they-think -I'm-cool, types, then yeah. And as little as I should care, it perpetuates this man's horendously bad journalism.

Re:http://slashdvorak.org/

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps in hopes that slashdotting him will take his server down permanently?

Re:http://slashdvorak.org/

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does slashdot time and time again reward Dvorak's senseless grumblings with links and an enormous readership?

Because /. doesn't have anything to say either.

Re:http://slashdvorak.org/

[rbarreira]

I agree. People should entirely stop commenting on those stories...

Really now..

[sH4RD]

Who really cares what Dvorak thinks? Yeah yeah, "Score: -1, Redundant", but I'm making quite a different point here. Most people so far are pointing out that Slashdot sure links there a lot, and boy is Dvorak negative, but really now, what has Dvorak done in the past that lead us to at least listen to his b*tching? I'm actually kinda seriously asking that question, as opposed to just rhetorically, because I really want to know what he did that somehow made some people respect his judgement as a pundit. I seem him everwhere it seems, but he never seems to make any sound statements, so what was the sound statement that gained people's trust? Or is his just another media-hyped, uptight, over critical whiner?

Re:Really now..

[bornyesterday]

"Or is his just another media-hyped, uptight, over critical whiner?" Yes

Re:Really now..

[rob_squared]

We listen to him for the same reason why we listen to a drunk describe a miracle invention he likes to call a "toaster." Because it's entertaininging and we get to say how much smarter we are than someone who is famous. Not trolling here, his antics are truly amusing sometimes.

Re:Really now..

[TheoMurpse]

He has been a writer for many technology magazines since the 1980s, which alone gives him a little credit, since one is PC Magazine (since 1986).

I think there was a Dvorak on TechTV, also, but I can't remember if that was him.

That being said, I'm putting him in my RSS killfile after this debacle, so none of his writings ever show up in my /. RSS feed.

Awareness

[edmz]

At least, having Creative Commons license included in a growing number of web apps makes it easier to find content with a license suitable to our use.

Hadn't the selection of a license been included in these webapps (flickr, some bloggin software, etc) I really doubt the users would think about these matters, less pick a license for their content.

It has made it simpler for the publisher and the "consumer".

Quite different from what Dvorak says:

"Creative Commons actually seems to be a dangerous system with almost zero benefits to the public, copyright holders..."

Dvorak is definetly trolling there.

Dvorak needs his own section...

[otis wildflower]

... so I can put it in my plonk box.

Automatic reaction to John Dvorak articles

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Firstly: John Dvorak is a pompous ass. Secondly: what was the topic again?

this confirms:

[Anonymous Coward]

Confirms: This is one of the dumbest columnists 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.

That guy should go back...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to making keyboards that no one uses.

Don't Go to His Site!!!

[charlie763]

This guy is an asshole. Going to his site will just make him look as if he has a good readership to his bosses. Read the article text below:

Creative Commons Humbug
07.18.05
Dvorak
Total posts: 36


By John C. Dvorak

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.

If you are unfamiliar with this thing, be sure to go to the Web site and see if you can figure it out. Creative Commons actually seems to be a dangerous system with almost zero benefits to the public, copyright holders, or those of us who would like a return to a shorter-length copyright law.

I have sent notes to this operation and never received a reply, in case you're wondering. Meanwhile, according to its Web site, the Creative Commons organization has money from the Hewlett Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. For what?

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.

There are several things that bother me about this initiative. First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?

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.

There's another thing that bugs me about Creative Commons. When you see its licenses the wording will say something like "Creative Commons License: Public domain." 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. Yet you see this over and over as if it were!

A good example is found on this page of the Prelinger Archives--a site that has a slew of old training films and miscellaneous campy productions. An information box at the start of a film review includes the notation: "Creative Commons license: Public Domain." Either this is incredibly pretentious or people do not know what public domain means. If I write something on my blog, for example, and decide not to cover it with th

Re:Don't Go to His Site!!!

[Firles]

OK, now THAT is a © violation... haha

Flexible

[ehaggis]

Creative Commons looks like a cafeteria style copyright. It does not seem to cover any new ground by what it does or does not cover, but it is innovative in the flexibility it offers under one umbrella.

I think that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and that the name sounds dumb."

Someone needs to take a look at themselves before talking about others...

In other news...

[JohnnyBigodes]

Creative Commons describes John Dvorak as "eye-rolling dumb". Film @ 11.

I want my five minutes back.

[moultano]

That is the most unintelligible argument I have ever seen professionally published.

Dvorak misses the point

[IgnacioB]

Too bad he misses the fundamental point that the rush to Creative Commons methodology is in response to the idiotic vaccum with current copyright as it applies to the digital world. He may have some technical and legal points about the context of a voluntary system when contrasted to legal history, but he lacks the vision to understand CC is a plea to the establishment to get off their duff and deal with the 21st century.

What does it do?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Why Mr. Dvorak, when you tag your whatever with the Creative Commons license, it only means that you aren't an asshole. Let me explain. If I don't, and you copy some of my work, perhaps to troll it on your common, despite fair use, I might still sue you. If I'm a big corporation, I might even win. So, by tagging it with a CC license, I'm saying that I'm a good guy, and I won't do that to you.

Though, in your case, the "not being an asshole" thing probably zooms right over your head...

At least he's being honest

[Mrs. Grundy]

He says he doesn't get it--and he's right he doesn't. From TFA:

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?

This is telling you that if you want to make money by selling my creative work, then I need a peice of that pie as the creaotr. I don't understand what is so difficult abou this concept

This is nonsense. Before Creative Commons I could always ask to reuse or mirror something.

If my policy is that anyone can reuse, alter and build upon my work for non-commercial purposes isn't easier just so say so--to encourage people--rather than replying to emails? I say everyone here on slashdot should send Dvorak an email asking if they can resuse his work and see how long it takes for him to see the point.

"Creative Commons License: Public domain." 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. Yet you see this over and over as if it were!

It is not something granted by creative commons, but it can be something granted by the holder of the copyright and an easy way to communicate this is via public domain statement--kind of like--you guessed is--the one creative commons standardizes.

Re:At least he's being honest

[asr_man]

everyone here on slashdot should send Dvorak an email asking if they can resuse his work and see how long it takes for him to see the point

And we would reuse his work...how exactly?

Line our bird cages? Refill our bathroom tissue dispensers? Homemade tampons?

Re:At least he's being honest

[An Onerous Coward]

Wonderful idea. His email seems to be john@dvorak.org. I'm sending him the following:

Mr. Dvorak,

I just read your article, "Creative Commons Humbug", and would like to reprint it on my blog as a tutorial on how to wax indignant about a subject without performing even the most basic research about it beforehand.

May I?

Re:At least he's being honest

[Anonymous Coward]

If my policy is that anyone can reuse, alter and build upon my work for non-commercial purposes isn't easier just so say so--to encourage people--rather than replying to emails? I say everyone here on slashdot should send Dvorak an email asking if they can resuse his work and see how long it takes for him to see the point.

He has published his mail address here.

Re:At least he's being honest

[Anonymous Coward]

Email address: john@dvorak.org

Re:At least he's being honest

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget to "Creative Commonize" your post so others can use it!

Re:At least he's being honest

[binford2k]

Hey, I took your advice (and stole your content, don't tell!)

-------------start----------------------

From: "John C. Dvorak"
To: "Ben Ford"
Date: 19 Jul 2005, 04:18:34 PM
Subject: Re:

no

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Ford"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:43 PM

> Mr. Dvorak,
>
> I just read your article, "Creative Commons Humbug", and would like to
> reprint it on my blog as a tutorial on how to wax indignant about a
subject
> without performing even the most basic research about it beforehand.
>
> May I?
>

Re:At least he's being honest

[cyberformer]

This is brilliant. Everyone should send him a copy of the note (if you don't mind us violating your copyright on it, that is...) That way, he might realize that actually saying what people are allowed (or not allowed to do), like CC, is better than replying to multiple emails. It also means that his work might live on even when he's dead and no longre able to reply to email.

He seems to think that CC damages fair use, which is only true in the sense that any statement of copyright might have a chilling effect on fair use. The real problem with fair use, as Lessig points out often, is overzealous corporate lawyers.

Most publishers are scared of other publishers' lawyers: Because it costs so much to defend against a law-suit, they simply won't publish fair use excerpts, and require authors who want to use any portion of someone else's work to get signed permission first. It's the same with music: If your song is a fair use parody (eg. Weird Al) or includes fair use samples, the RIAA labels won't put it out without licenses from everyone who might potentially sue.

Re:At least he's being honest

[An Onerous Coward]

Violate my copyright???? You *will* be hearing from my lawyers. :)

Oh, all right. Ahem, "I do hereby release my earlier post under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license." Actually, I really don't care about attribution, but they took away that variation because it wasn't very popular.

Dvorak hasn't responded to mine. Pity.

Dvorak isn't completely wrong

[otter42]

Looking at the silver lining, this is actually a victory of sorts. If you look at what he's saying, he's coming out on the side of severe copyright reform. And anytime a widely distributed (although not in this case well-read) author comes out for a return to common sense copyright, it is absolutely a step in the right direction.

He simply disapproves of the tool we're using and raises some valid points, such as "Creative Commons: Public Domain". (Where he is incorrect, though, is in thinking that this is worthless. Au contraire, it improves awareness of what Creative Commons is and what it seeks to do.)

In the end, I approve of the message, even if I don't approve of his message.

Please stop posting this shit

[BenjyD]

Please please please would Slashdot stop giving this idiot so many page impressions. Time after time he writes this shit, all straw-man arguments and half truths, and Slashdot predictably links to it. He hasn't said anything insightful yet or made any useful predictions: why keep posting links to his drivel?

If we ignore him, he will go away. As it is, every time he posts one of these articles his employer gets a nice big boost to their advertising revenue.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[coolGuyZak]

Unless you include the time he was right ab out Macs switching to Intel... Oh, but this is /.

My bad.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[wootest]

If we ignore him, he will go away.

No he won't. Even if everyone who hates him stop linking to him (which won't happen), many others (like magazines) will still pick up on it.

Consider this: The guy writes something that's completely wrong. (Done with the jokes yet? Good. Let's keep moving.) If Slashdot links to it, there will be thousands of people who other people trust to know this stuff that have had time to go through his argument or disinformation and be able to counter it. Would you rather have people accept his writing as right?

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[Fordiman]

Or better. Next Dvorak article, coral cache it and link only that, with a non-linked, text URL to the original article.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, someone who runs around in the street repeatedly hitting his head with a hammer usually causes at least some amusement for spectators.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[crabpeople]

If we ignore him, he will go away.

No he won't.

it worked for jon katz. he just disappeared one day...

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[William-Ely]

He was one of the reasons I canceled my PC Magazine subscription. Most of his articles just pissed me off and my non-geek wife was tired of hearing my rants about him at the dinner table.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[wootest]

I doubt he was linked to by more people than Dvorak.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[Omega Blue]

/. links to this rubbish so it gets more views. Same effect really.

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[sugarboy]

It's so we start a discussion on the pro's and con's of the arguments, so that we all have a better understanding of the issues involved.

In my view, the online technical community (eg: slashdotters) is becoming increasingly aware of such issues (copyright, freedom, general rights, etc), and appear to be more actively dicusssing and doing anything about them than any other group. I think one of the reasons for this is that these issues are becoming more and more important in the IT field.

It's important to discuss these issues when they come up in a popular column/forum/wherever because we're not the only ones who read them: other people less aware of the reality of the situation also read them. If we know what the issues are, then hopefully the FUD won't propogate from us, or through us. I think a lot of people who aren't very "IT Aware" generally look to the IT 'professionals' for any issues that may have an impact on IT, including the type of crap that Dvorak spews forth.

Dvoraks' comments on Creative Commons might not strictly speaking be "News for nerds", but I think it's definately "Stuff that matters", given the general sort of topics we do cover here.

(I realise that I perhaps paint a picture of a supposed "Utopia", but I'm just talking about "in general, wouldn't it be nice" terms :)

Re:Please stop posting this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to reading this article, my interest by Creative Commons was renewed and I will be using it in a website.

Dvorak's articles raise awareness of the topics it talks about. Just this alone is reason enough to go on linking to his articles.

Restricting my freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "non-commercial use only" restriction that Creative Commons types like to put forth is just as debilitating a restriction of Fair Use as anything the RIAA has cooked up. NO ONE has the right to tell me what I can and cannot seek payment for.

The "non-commercial use is good" idea is based on a primitive religious-socialist supertition that "money is the root of all evil". It is detrimental to economic and technological progress and should be done away with posthaste.

Much, much more!

[77Punker]

He's much more than just a bombastic flamer with no grasp of the happenings of the computing world.

He also has the same last name of that guy that made that keyboard layout!

Re:Much, much more!

[The Bubble]

He also has the same last name of that guy that made that keyboard layout! Sadly enough, that is probably a large root of his readership. I know it's the first thing I think of whenever I read his name.

Re:Much, much more!

[77Punker]

Yeah, same here. The second thing is that the topic of his editorial is either really dumb, he hates it, or both.

Re:Much, much more!

[Karma Farmer]

Wait... John Dvorak isn't the same Dvorak who made the keyboard layout?

Next, you'll tell us that John Katz isn't the same Katz who said "All your base are belong to us!"

Dvorak can't comprehend being less restrictive

[MythoBeast]

The Creative Commons isn't about binding your property rights closer to you, it's about specifically allowing people to use your work for certain purposes. He's somehow thinking that it's supposed to add restrictions to use, but it is actually all about decreasing restrictions.

Certainly the principles of fair use allow you to use excerpts from people's work for media purposes, but it doesn't allow you to recombine pieces into clips, it doesn't allow you to use it as background music for an informational broadcast, it doesn't allow people to re-mix your work in with others to create something new. Creative Commons DOES allow these things.

It also has a very effective proviso that allows you to specify that others can't use your work to make money off of it through this license. If they want that, they have to make special arrangements with you. This fits many people's philosophies much better than current copyright laws do. "Give my stuff as much airplay as you like, but if you earn money off of it, I want my cut".

It's a good question

[91degrees]

But asked in a stupid way.

And as far as I can see, the point is purely political. Creative Commons is just a brand. It's indicating that people subscribe to a belief.

The belief is that while copyright has its uses, in many cases sharing copyrighted material is a good thing, and creators of original content encourage this. It already has reached the public perception in a small way.

The public and the politicians need to be made aware of this. They need to realise how many creators of original content there are who enjoy some form of protection but don't want excessive powers like the DMCA and eternal copyright extensions.

At least that's how I see it. If you see it differently, please share.

Re:It's a good question

[douglasd]

It is not purely political, it is purely legal.

The key is that CC works under the current political framework.

Those who license their content with the CC license protect their content in a particular manner which specifies more freedom of use than is specified under copywright law, but is still restricted.

The restriction is typically some form of "you can not charge for this if I do not charge you for it". However, that is not the only available restricted use under the CC.

From this you should be able to see that the work is available to the masses, but still protected by the author to the extent that it is valuable financially.

This is not a political mechanism, which would require action by congress. This is a legal mechnaism which operates under the current legal structure.

One could say that while it operates under the current legal structure, and is designed to operate within those constraints to facillitate content authors to allow distribution of their work in some circumstances and not others, without action by congress or any other political body, that is serves a political purpose, in freeing content beyond what the current political regime prefers, but that would rate the CC as additionally political, rather than purely political.

You would be much more correct to assess the CC as purely legal, and the Open Source Movement (not any licenses or licensers) as political.

easy, douglas d

Re:It's a good question

[Rovaani]

I see Creative Commons as a brand and a movement:
The movement is about encouraging others to share their stuff.
The brand is about convenience: I see the CC icons and I know instantly what I can do with the material. I don't have to read (as the author doesn't have to write) the specific license for each product.

Has he gotten worse?

[rolfwind]

Has he gotten worse since he was correct on the Mactel issue?

Never mind like every psychic, he overall correct prediction rate is low and the correct ones were often broad or obvious.

Props to him for his Mactel prediction though. I hope he doesn't replace his footstool with a ladder though. The higher they are......

Right

[mstyne]

My main argument is that Dvorak is a cock.

Re:Right

[oh, bitch please]

So true, so very very true..
I had the extreme displeasure of working for his publisher for a few years.

The people at ZIFF were frightened of him. My bosses were the most horrible people, but they became fawing and tried their best to work their noses up is large crack.
I made the near fatal error of printing his name without the "C" (which stands for cock) in his name. You see, his majesty is into numerology and if his name appears without the "C" (which stands for cock) it ruins the energy around him....

John Dvorak John Dvorak John Dvorak John Dvorak John Dvorak

Dvorak can't possibly be that ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just trolling. I'm trying real hard to give up biting trolls and posting on message boards... but damn it, this troll was just too dumb.

Dvorak, since you obviously want us to believe you are a moron I'll try to keep this short and simple (dumb people have short attention spans)

CC is a way to let others freely reproduce your work without worrying about others absconding it. IINM the poster child for NOT using the CC license is FreeBSD.

Oh, and John... your magazine used to be a regular read of mine. Now I only check it out online, and once in a while, and only to read your trolls.

Aparently, Dvorak's masters told him he had to troll harder to get people to register for teh forums.

Too bad (for that now useless rag PC Mag) we're all posting @/.

While I'm ragging on PC mag, do you absolutely HAVE To take 45 seconds to load the index in a T-1? I would think a tech magazine would have, I don't know, some techies who could get your server and HTML fixed. My pages (mcgrew.info) mostly load in 15 seconds on a 28 baud modem, wtf?

Re:Dvorak can't possibly be that ignorant

[91degrees]

He's just trolling. I'm trying real hard to give up biting trolls and posting on message boards... but damn it, this troll was just too dumb.

But it's a good troll. Why is the CC a good idea? By asking this, he forces us to ask ourselves, and to explain. This allows us to analyse our own opinions more deeply.

Journalism at its finest.

[Cerebus]

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.

Nice to know he seeks independent, unbiased views. Next up, Dvorak interviews Steve Ballmer on the benefits of Linux...

Re:Journalism at its finest.

[swelke]

Next up, Dvorak interviews Steve Ballmer on the benefits of Linux...

Dangit, stop giving him ideas!

Re:Journalism at its finest.

[Arkaein]

I'm not positive, but I believe that the system that Orlowski is critical of is the general state of copyright and not the Creative Commons, i.e. Orlowski is likely a proponent of Creative Commons.

If so, it would be more like Interviewing Linus Torvalds to understand the benefits of Linux (to correct your metaphor). Unfortunately Dvorak uses Orlowski's statment of what CC does that copyright doesn't ("It does nothing") as a straw man attack on CC itself, cherry picking the part of the argument that CC does not supercede copyright to argue that it is completely useless.

He has a point, like it or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

It serves no purpose. Public Domain is Public Domain. Copyright is copyright. End. Of. Story.

Years ago, to gain a copyright, you had to fill out a form and send in the material to the Library of Congress. Now you just use the word "copyright," add your name and a date, and publish it. What could be easier?

He's right -- what's the point?

You know what the point is? Copyright and public domain aren't "theirs". The community and "scene" can't claim them, they've been arond longer than we've been alive. Therefore, they see the solution is to "invent" something else so they can hold it up like a proud toddler that just got done coloring both inside and outside the lines of a picture. Sad.

It's nothing more than a mere buzzword like "podcasting" or "blogging", just another term to make people think they're cooler than they really are, and it's another sad cry for help from a generation of losers who want to make themselves feel very important and sepcial, but don't want to put a damn bit of work into it or do a single thing of any worth, meaning, or value to anyone.

Is it any wonder Dvorak thinks the open source community is insane? He actually lives in reality...

Re:He has a point, like it or not...

[DavidTC]

There is no such thing as the Creative Commons 'Public Domain License', you fucktard, and if you'd done a bit of research you'd have noticed that.

There is a Creative Commons 'Public Domain Declaration', which is grouped and classified along with the various CC licenses so it's machine readable by the various things that read CC licenses. We're sorry if it somehow upsets you for a document to have an encoded way of saying it's in the public domain.

This declaration, obviously, functions identically to all other public domain declarations, and no one has ever claimed otherwise, except possibly some poor blogger somewhere who called it by the wrong name.

And, BTW, you haven't have to say 'Copyright' for the last two decades to get a copyright on something, you idiot.

He's trying to mislead...

[Kream]

By saying that fair use gives him the right to CC-non-commercial-license stuff for commercial work. But that would only be correct if he used it WITHIN the parameters of the fair use doctrine. If, on the other hand, it were public domain, he could use the entirety for commercial purposes.

So CC-NC does have some use then.

Oh, and what about share-alike? Maybe someone doesn't mind people making money out of something s/he creates but would hate the thought of someone else down the line being prevented from mixing/sampling/whatever that creation. What does conventional intellectual "property" have for them?

Tiny good point among the chaff

[MostlyHarmless]

The one tiny good point Dvorak makes here is that the CC licenses should have a (purely informational) clause noting that "none of these limitations should be construed as eliminating any Fair Use rights granted by U.S. copyright law." That's a clarification to the license that is at least worth discussing.

Other than that point, though, the article is worthless. The same principle that always must be pointed out with the GPL applies to CC as well: by default, copyright gives you *no* rights to copy except fair use, so any of these licenses can only *add* rights. In the case of the GPL, they add "you can copy this freely as long as you publish the source to any changes you redistribute", etc. The CC licenses work exactly the same way, with a different set of rights given.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[Kream]

Well, under the same reasoning, so should every other license under the sun, naming the possible fair uses...

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[Peyna]

copyright gives you *no* rights to copy except fair use

Fair use is not a right bestowed upon the public, it is a limitation on the rights granted to the copyright holder. There is a significant difference here in that the right as issue is never your right to fair use, but whether the copyright holder's rights extend to a certain point or not.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[JohnA]

They already include such verbage as seen here.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[lheal]

>still allows fair use

I'm not so sure a disclaimer like that's a good idea, without fully explaining Fair Use. One goal of CC is to be understandable as a license.

Besides, as you say, the CC gives the user more rights to the material than does Fair Use. Does Dvorak put a Fair Use disclaimer in his lame "Copyright 2005" line?

CC doesn't conflict with Fair Use. Dvorak is like that kid in school who always thought he was right, even when he couldn't pronounce the big words.

That's a tough lesson you learn as an adult at some point: sometimes, your opinion is just wrong.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[Creechur]

The one tiny good point Dvorak makes here is that the CC licenses should have a (purely informational) clause noting that "none of these limitations should be construed as eliminating any Fair Use rights granted by U.S. copyright law." That's a clarification to the license that is at least worth discussing.

Maybe something along the lines of "Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above."? Oh wait, that's *already* in bold on the human-readable Summary page

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[A.S.]

quoth the OP:

the CC licenses should have a (purely informational) clause noting that "none of these limitations should be construed as eliminating any Fair Use rights granted by U.S. copyright law."

They do. Look it up before you make incorrect assumptions.

saith e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5:

Fair Use Rights. Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[Kjella]

The one tiny good point Dvorak makes here is that the CC licenses should have a (purely informational) clause noting that "none of these limitations should be construed as eliminating any Fair Use rights granted by U.S. copyright law."

Yes, because that wouldn't be misinterpreted outside the US. The rights granted to you by law are the rights of that country. Placing that quote there verbatim would imply that regardless of whether your live in a more or less restrictive country, US law is world law. That is quite a different thing than stating that it does not remove any rights granted by law.

Kjella

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[AnObfuscator]

The one tiny good point Dvorak makes here is that the CC licenses should have a (purely informational) clause noting that "none of these limitations should be construed as eliminating any Fair Use rights granted by U.S. copyright law." That's a clarification to the license that is at least worth discussing.

It's already in there: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/fullrigh ts. So he's wrong about that, too.

I think it's fair to say that he's just a moron who doesn't take the time to perform even the most basic research.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[MostlyHarmless]

You're absolutely right. I should have read the license rather than trusting Dvorak's word on anything.

So, the entire article was worthless. I guess we all so that one coming.

Re:Tiny good point among the chaff

[Anonymous Coward]

You're hardly blamable. I spent around ten minutes on the webpage and didn't find the license itself, and then gave up.

Plus, he never said that it overrode fair use- he said it implied that it might override fair use, confusing the user who wasn't 100% certain what fair use was.

headline should read "Dvorak on drugs"

[toby]

Really. What a windbag. It appears that having a well known byline has gone to his head and rotted his brain, as happens often to these pundits. I couldn't even finish the article. He just doesn't get the tiniest part of what is going on with community development. Come back with a clue, John.

Newsflash

[pudge]

"Clown Calls Ringmaster Silly"

fair use FUD

[chrystophe]

Did he even read the CC licenses? Or even their 1-page blurbs? He claims that CC tries to subvert fair use:

• "[it] does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous 'fair use' provisos of existing copyright law"
• "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."

Yet every single CC license clearly states "Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above."

Lessig wrote a very interesting book on the subject. An articulate response to that would be great, but Dvorak is just spreading clueless FUD.

Another boneheaded Dvorak article...

[Prothonotar]

Slashdot could do us all a favor by not posting any more articles based on John Dvorak's dribble.

From TFA...

[XxtraLarGe]

There are several things that bother me about this initiative. First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?

Dvorak, it's telling you that if you want to use it for commercial purposes, you have to contact the content creator so they can get their cut. Dvorak, maybe you're the one who's "Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes."

"Write or die"

[Miros]

There used to be an old expression often applied to college professors: "Write or die." Write or die gentlemen, write or die.

Re:"Write or die"

[wwwojtek]

"publish or perish" is what you were looking for

Re:"Write or die"

[Miros]

I blame "vote or die" for confusing me. Hey, that gives me an idea! If dvorak keeps pissing people off this much, he could be an excellent case for "publish and perish."

It has to be asked:

[johnny_sas]

Why the hell do the media (ie. slashdot) even acknowledge the existence of this obvious flamebait that calls himself "Dvorak"??

All this guy does is talk out of his ass, simply to attract attention to himself and his "writings".

And yes, I do know he talks out of his ass; I heard an audio interview with him once.

All it was is him farting for 10 minutes.

Wasn't this guy . . .

[SpeedyGonz]

. . . the same one that made some controversy when he bashed the first iMac laptop in an article comparing it to a Barbie/makeup box thing?

Talk about political correctness . . .

Throwin' a stick at a wasp's nest methinks

[SamQ]

The cc collective has introduced me to some of the more interesting content on the web. Generally the image archives referenced are excellent, and even MIT have released commons-licensed course notes. Dvorak must be trying to find some new ground; everyone's done blogs, podcasting and rss/atom to death

He's a dork.

[BigZaphod]

Seriously. Sometimes he sounds smart, but that's just because he says so much crap he's bound to say something intelligent now and then. It's a statistical thing.

Re:He's a dork.

[imadork]

Calling Mr. Dvorak a dork is an insult to all of us Dorks....

Dvorak is a tool

[Alioth]

Dvorak is such a tool (and not a useful one). Please, Slashdot editors - stop posting John Dvorak stories. The man is so wrong he isn't even wrong. This is the man who moaned about Windows saying the performance sucked because the idle process was using 98% of CPU. The guy is incredibly ignorant. I bet his rant on the CC licenses is from a position of total ignorance, too.

Re:Dvorak is a tool

[Corsican Upstart]

Wow. When I saw what you said about Dvorak and the System Idle Process, I was skeptical, and thought that I'd really have to see it to believe it. I didn't think he could be that ignorant, after all these years of writing about technology.

Well, he is.

I just did a Google search, and the first result was this PC Magazine article.

Here's a quote:

"Idle-Time Process. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right."

This is incredible. I used to respect John Dvorak's opinion - mostly a few years ago, when I read PCMag more, although I still did somewhat until today. But for him to be quite that ignorant, is really amazing. Needless to say, after this and all the other things he's recently said, it's clear that he really is a hack.

The sun comes up...

[RingDev]

And the sun goes down, yet his furry rump missed it again.

-Rick

I put my "best" work under CC

[lheal]

When I write something that I want people to see, I put it on the web somewhere under a Creative Commons license.

I don't do that only out of namby-pamby group-hug altruism. I do it also to maximize exposure, in the (probably fruitless) hope that someone will see my work and pay me to help them with something. It feels good when someone links back, or gives kudos, too. And when a piece gets picked up, I have a sense of accomplishment even if I don't have a sense of cash in my pocket for it. Would I otherwize, without the CC?

It's a new economy in a new medium, and the ways of working from the old media need to be adjusted. The CC is one such adjustment.

The days of the paid columnist are probably numbered. In our future, I am afraid, are the increasingly frantic shots from Senior Tour players trying to prove they still belong in the game.

(Sorry for the golf reference - I'm not a golfer, but it seemed to fit)

FARKING STOP IT

[BHearsum]

Please stop posting Dvorak articles. He is a farking troll.

Once again, Dvorak doesn't get it...

[AnObfuscator]

to quote from his "column" (used in a very loose sense of the word):
There are several things that bother me about this initiative. First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?

What it's telling you, John, is that you're a dumbfuck who hasn't figured out that the CC license is a MODULAR license.

The basic CC license is, essentially, "public domain" -- there are no restrictions on your reproduction of the material. CC then offers legally defined exceptions. With all of the CC terms in place, you have essentially the full standard U.S. copyright restrictions.

What CC does is it gives you a legally well-formed copyright system that lets you protect your work, yet lets it be redistributed somewhat more freely than typical material, but not-quite public domain free.

it just so happens that one of those optional restrictions is "no commercial distribution". I'd like to point out that this does not in any way trump "fair use", something that Dvorak would know if he had the IQ of a pet rock.

as to why I use CC: I want to allow my works (should I actually get around to putting some content on my website... any day now, folks... ;) to be distributed, and I want to encourage their distribution -- however, I want them to be protected. Namely, I want credit for what I do, and I want more people to release their work freely. So I have a "By, Share Alike" License -- Commercial derivations are perfectly ok.

Can we please not have any more Dvorak on /.? He's just so mind-bogglingly stupid, he makes me feel physically ill. Seriously.

A+ for Dvorak. F for Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is that Dvorak actually understands US copyright law. I'd wager 90% of those who have bashed his article haven't even looked at what's on the books.

And wouldn't understand it if they had.

It also makes sense that computer geeks would be in favor of fewer copyrights, but CC is plain old ridiculous.

Your copyright is established the minute you write something unless that right is otherwise waived. Period. This 'Creative Commons' crap is pseudo-intelligent nonsense. Yet the ever-growing online community will likely continue to use it like the sheep they are, and those who simply can't understand a bad idea when they see one will help perpetuate it.

I'll stick to the legal copyright that ensures my work when I create it, thanks. I'd rather not risk losing it.

Someone needs to explain the following to Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

First he calls Creative Commons stupid as if it were a fairy tale, then he admits he doesn't have a clue of its purpose. How the fuck can it be stupid if you don't understand it to begin with??

Just because I don't feel like creating -ANOTHER- useless registration on -YET ANOTHER- website just to give my two cents on the matter, i'll post it below:

Creative Commons is a license for content. It's specifically geared toward artistic and creative (hence the name) works such as music, books, art, etc. It's not like a license, it is one. Like the GPL it gives both the author and the users rights that plain-old copyright does not define.

There is more than one Creative Commons license because an author may want different kind of permissions applied to their stuff, or the stuff may require different wording to be protected properly. Think of Creative Commons as a general theme of copyright licenses that enable people to share their stuff under certain rules. The rules are designed both to protect the author and allow users to use the content freely for certain activities.

Finally, it's not just some trendy fad for content authors and it's not a stupid idea. The CC licenses follow in the same footsteps as the GPL license but is intended to be applied to things other than programming code. Considering how widely used the GPL and its derivatives are i'd say this set of licenses is not just a flash in the pan and may actually be useful and benefitial to people.

There can be only one....

[3seas]

...explaination of this bashing of the Creative commons by John,

He's getting senile...

Hey, John - i got two words for you

[gsfprez]

i have released two works so far - a CD and a DVD - under the Creative Commons license. I have made plenty of money on these, and my sales have been beyond what I thought i was going to make.

gsf.org/copyright

the worst part of this is...i fscking clicked on his link...

crap, frazzel ,bar, baz... damnit....

shit.

aw hell, i guess the damage is done, i might as well read what he has to say.

He didn't use to be this way...

[hackwrench]

kinda sad really.

I use CC for songwriting all the time!

[tetrahedrassface]

As a fairly lazy but extremely serious songwriter, I use creative commons quite a lot. I have not released a cd, but unlike some folks covered here, I do release my studio stuff up on the net. With creative Commons i am assured that it won't be altered, or sold commercially, or profited from. The songs can be performed by someone if they wish, but even those performances cannot be shipped and sold for profit. I like CC because it lets me set something free, but on my terms, in a way that won't affect the ability of me to maybe one day get a check for one of works..

This Dvark is an ass.. Power to the commons!

Re:I use CC for songwriting all the time!

[DerekLyons]

As a fairly lazy but extremely serious songwriter, I use creative commons quite a lot. I have not released a cd, but unlike some folks covered here, I do release my studio stuff up on the net. With creative Commons i am assured that it won't be altered, or sold commercially, or profited from.

Umm... No. You are assured so such thing - as CC won't deter a thief/pirate/whatever any more or less than any other license.

The songs can be performed by someone if they wish, but even those performances cannot be shipped and sold for profit.

Umm... No. CC doesn't stop someone from selling copies of performances containing your song.

In both cases, CC allows you legal remedies if someone does do or attempt to do those things; but it doesn't stop them.

Re:I use CC for songwriting all the time!

[tetrahedrassface]

Your correct.. i should have said that i am assured of legal remedies should someone steal something etc. Which I would have anyway as the copyright holder of each work. But CC allows me to set less restrictive terms, rather than just not enforce straight copyright which is rather strict. IMHO,P> CC just smells better. :)

Claptrap. Stop Linking

[Bob9113]

Hey editors, could you stop propping up this washed-up has-been? It's really aggravating to see you steering the newer and less experienced members of our community towards such obvious trolling. Dvorak has nothing to contribute - let him die in peace.

Go to His Site!!!

[91degrees]

Just because you disagree with what he says doesn't mean you shouldn't go to his site.

Disagreement is important to freedom of speech. He provides this valuable service.

I get what he is saying.

[Shky]

See, he brings up that point that he wouldn't want anything else, since he's already protected in "the extreme." And he's right. He's wondering why he would want more protection. I suppose the problem is that he doesn't understand why someone like me would want less protection. For instance, if I write a movie script, I give it the NonCommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license. That way, if you want to make a film but don't have a script, you can use one of mine. For free! Just make sure you say I wrote it. And don't sell it. With normal copyright, I'm protected in the extreme, so that you can't use my work.

So the issue is, he doesn't understand why someone would simply want less protection.

junk, junk, sh*t

[l3v1]

[ok, long time no troll, here it comes]

I'm not listening, ta-da-daaa, la-la-laaa, I don't hear you, la-la-laaa, can't hear a thing but I see your lips are moving [Deep Purple: Razzle Dazzle].

Whatever, just somebody please shut this guy off before my older neighbors drop dead from my loud curses.

Every time you Feed the Beast it Grows

[WillAffleckUW]

so posting a link to a Dvorak column just helps promote his anti-Open Source anti-Creative Commons viewpoints.

However, I just noticed that some of my favorite science magazines are using the Creative Commons open source for their papers.

Look, originally copyright for scientific uses was more about making sure other people didn't publish your work and pretend they did it, and they didn't change it so that it said something you didn't say, except where noted as commentary. We are so far away from that necessity nowadays, it's getting in the way of the scientific community at large.

Breaking News.......

[baz1860]

Dvorak in criticism of Tech Community Shocker!!!!!!

missing the point

[Kallahar]

As usual, Dvorak misses the point completely.

The whole reason CC exists is because people are getting sued left and right for using someone else's work. He says "Creative Commons tries to insert itself as another layer into a system that already protects content developers like me to an extreme.", but CC is set up the other way. If you write something and want to make sure people understand that they can copy/redistribute/etc *without* worrying about getting sued, then they use CC. If you want to be a dick and restrict the crap you create then you can stick with traditional copyrights.

CC is *not* a way to retain *more* rights, it's a way to clearly share your work with others.

Re:missing the point

[hacksoncode]

News flash! Creative commons does nothing to prevent you from being sued. It might (N.B. might) help you win your case, but you can still quite easily be sued.

Severely Mis/Underinformed

[swelke]

Okay, this guy just doesn't know what he's talking about. He needs to go to a web site and read the definitions of the words he's saying. Quoth TFA:

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."

Of course it does nothing outside of existing copyright law. Creative Commons is a licensing scheme that works within exisiting copyright law.

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?

The answer, of course, is that Creative Commons licenses allow creators to specify which things are allowed. If you want to allow commercial use, allow it. If you don't want to allow commercial use, then don't. It's not that difficult.

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.(emphasis added)

You mean fair use like me quoting segments of your article, John? Anyway, the relevant issue there is that word, "ask". Having to ask permission to do something is certainly no the same as having the right to do something. Creative Commons licenses give end-users rights to do certain things. Yeah, the courts usually allow people to get away with certain kinds of use that violate the letter of copyright law, which fall under the domain of "fair use", but fair use is not really written into most countries' copyright laws. Most publishers, etc. won't allow their content creators to use "fair use" works, as the "fair" part can be challenged in court, which is expensive. The nice thing with Creative Commons licenses is that the rights users have are formulated clearly and it's basically impossible to get very far with suing somebody for use that complies with the license.
I'd keep going, there are more problems with the article, but this post is too long already.

For everyone

[solomonrex]

Who didn't take poli. sci. (or didn't stay awake) please google 'Tragedy of the Commons' to get a clue about the funny name!

Can we jsut ignore Dvorak ...

[SengirV]

.. Maybe, if we do - He'll just go away.

Summed Up

[paul.dunne]

"John C. Dvorak's modus operandi is to instigate. He is a button-pusher, seldom if ever trying to inform, preferring instead to inflame. And he's pretty good at that. A decade ago, he was the back-page columnist for the now-defunct MacUser magazine; almost every month, the MacUser letters-to-the-editor page contained at least one angry message asking "Why do you publish this guy's column?" The answer, of course, was because it was the sort of column that inspired people to write letters-to-the-editor.

"Dvorak is a pundit, not a reporter. When he makes a prediction, it is usually based on nothing more than his own conjecture, not actual sources. And looking at his track record, his conjecture usually has more to do with what he thinks will be controversial, rather than what might actually happen. (E.g. he's often predicted that Apple was about to go out of business, a prediction which never ceases to get a rise out of the easily incensed.) There's nothing wrong or dishonest about that, but it's something you need to keep in mind with everything he writes. To the best of my knowledge, he's never had a serious scoop regarding Apple -- a significant prediction that turned out to be right -- and he's been on the job for at least two decades."

-- John Gruber

Next!

Re:Summed Up

[GlenRaphael]

"To the best of my knowledge, [Dvorak]'s never had a serious scoop regarding Apple -- a significant prediction that turned out to be right -- and he's been on the job for at least two decades."

The funny thing about that quote is to look farther down the page and find it was inspired by Dvorak's claim in April of 2003 that Apple was planning to move to Intel hardware.

Re:Summed Up

[paul.dunne]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Re:Summed Up

[arktos]

The funny thing about that quote is to look farther down the page and find it was inspired by Dvorak's claim in April of 2003 that Apple was planning to move to Intel hardware.

Dvorak's claim was that Apple was moving to Itanium in 2003/2004, and would be selling OSX to OEMs in 2004. How very convenient to call that prediction "planning to move to Intel hardware".

So wait, what's the difference....

[Miros]

So what's the difference between the creative commons and saying "Copyright 2005 me, all rights reserved except reproduction for non-commercial use."
Furthermore, it's important for people to remember that there's no "white knight" of copyrights who is going to ride in on horseback to slay those evildoers who misuse your work. It's up to you to spend your time and money to enforce your copyrights.
Trying to "save money" by using the CC instead of seeing a lawyer is silly, because if someone ever infringed you'd have to spend a whole ton of money anyway taking them to court over it. To say you're doing it to "save money" is almost the same thing as saying "steal from me because I dont have the resources to defend myself or my work."
Hell, can I get a list of all you people who "saved money," what you created, and where I can download it? I think I'm going to become a publisher.

Re:So wait, what's the difference....

[be-fan]

That's basically what CC is! Is it only shorter to write "All rights reserved except reproduction for non-commerial use" than "licensed under Creative Commons"? It's simply a way of standardizing the legalease, so people can immediately know what rights they have to a particular work.

Re:So wait, what's the difference....

[migurski]

So what's the difference between the creative commons and saying "Copyright 2005 me, all rights reserved except reproduction for non-commercial use."

The difference is that "Copyright 2005 me, all rights reserved except reproduction for non-commercial use." is less legally-precise than this, CC's "legal code" version of this. Your short version is a pointer to their long version that happens to be much more defensible in courts worldwide.

Emperor's new clothes fairy tale

[nizo]

You can read the original Andersen fairy tale (with pictures) for free here. made availble with a Creative Commons License. Or you could fork over money and go buy a copy of Andersen's Fairy Tales like Dvorak must have.

Re:Emperor's new clothes fairy tale

[RosenSama]

I doubt Andersen used the Creative Commons License when he wrote.

Yeah well..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to see here. Please move along...

Please ban Dvorak

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

Seriously. I'm not the only one in the thread who points this out. But maybe with enough voices (hah) it will get through the minds of the editors.

NOTHING by Dvorak has any place in a /. article. It is uniformly garbage, and has been since about 1991 (he did some adequate writing before that; though nothing spectacular). Don't feed the trolls by giving such tripe frontpage billing! Just don't do it.

Re:Please ban Dvorak

[paulproteus]

In fact, slashdot's trolls have more well-informed opinions.

Dvorak hasn't said anything interesting in years. At least the trolls on Slashdot come up with new jokes from time to time.

Re:Please ban Dvorak

[imr]

Since slashdot editors must have a reason to put his worthless articles on front page again and again, can we at least have a dvorak section, so that we can individually ban those articles?

Re:Wanker!

[MynockGuano]

I didn't read the article; I just came in to read comments like this one, because they're funny. >8)

Thank you, sir, for brightening my mood after a long day's work.

Some people don't like the GPL either.

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me a lot of the kind of rant we hear from businesses who hate the GPL. If my license suits my purposes as a creator then I will continue to create. If it suits you as a business but not me as a creator, then I will not continue to create. It's all about me feeling that I am being treated fairly.

The idea of a 'commons' is that there is a resource that all can share equally. It is not about someone appropriating all the benefits for themselves. Actually, if these greedy people thought about it, appropriating the commons is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

The GPL is brilliant. Creative commons isn't quite as brilliant but it'll do. Our continued wellbeing depends on a steady stream of innovation. It is necessary that we be able to stand on the shoulders of others. Taking things like scientific research into the private domain is a sure ticket into the next dark ages.

dumbest articles ever put forth by Dvorak...

[javaxman]

So, his whole point is he doesn't get it and nobody wants to take the time to explain what it's there for, so it must be dumb, since he's clearly not the dumb one around here ?

That really says it all, doesn't it ? I can't figure out what the purpose of this website is, so it must be a dumb website. I can't figure out how to use this Linux operating system, so it must suck. These metric units of measure don't seem familiar to me, using them is dumb.

What a pompous ass.

I'm not that curious and I don't care that much, but even to the complete idiot, it should be blindingly obvious that Creative Commons is a clearing house website of sorts. It's there as an attempt to shore up freedom of use. Of course, it's NOT 'necessary', it doesn't change copyright law or even do anything revolutionary... *except* that it is a place where you can go to find things which you can use. It's an aggregator, sort of, like a limited Google or whatever, so right there it's useful. If I want, i can search out some public-domain stuff there, and I'll *know* it's public-domain and can use it as such. Or, if I'm not repackaging and selling content, I can find something there with a different license that allows commercial-free use, and use that, and know it's OK to do so, without fear of being sued or the hassle of contacting the creator for their permission.

And of course, I still have fair use at my disposal. The Creative Commons license doesn't ( and, as Dvorak points out ) can't limit that.

I haven't researched Creative Commons to pick up what I just wrote... but I think it's vaguely correct, and if I can figure that out, why is John so dumb?

If you answered because he's a part of why we've grown to dislike those in the media, because he is as usual just trolling to get hits on his website, you are right. At least, I hope so. It'd be sad if this guy is really so stupid.

If his questions about Creative Commons aren't answered in the "about" section of their website I'd be really shocked.

Ugh...

[saintp]

From the stop-listening-to-this-dumb-fuck-department. Seriously, does anyone think Dvorak is anything but a troll? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?

Creative Commons? Come and Get It!

[Jason Scott]

Just for the record, my 5 and a half hour documentary (8 episodes, 3 DVDs) on Dial Up Bulletin Board Systems, which is here and can be ordered here was licensed Creative Commons. Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike, even. And it's done me very well indeed. Financially, personally, and socially.

I'll gladly speak to any group about how I turned a profit in less than a few weeks by doing this.

In fact, just feel free to read the massive essay I wrote about why Creative Commons worked for me.

Dvorak can suck an egg.

The Collected Works of John C. Dvorak

[coolGuyZak]

Hey... don't underestimate the power of the Collected Works of John C. Dvorak. That's big money right there.

Just imagine how many of us nerds will buy a copy just to burn it? And if it's printed on quality paper, it might even be the perfect quality to wipe your ass with!

And now for something completely different: Why is the underline tag not allowed?

Re:The Collected Works of John C. Dvorak

[Charles Jo]

Only if it includes the pictures of him pretending to have heart attacks just because Intel and AMD introduced faster chips. And articles must include his overuse of the bold style.

Flawed thinking

[Spy der Mann]

Dvorak forgets something:

The Law was created for men; not men for the Law.

If something which is very useful for the community "complicates" the law, doesn't that imply that men should become slaves of the Law that was made to serve THEM in the first place?

CC Vs PC Mag Terms of Service

[dago]

Well, I wonder if he even read the actual Tersm of Service that cover his writings.

Now, try to read the following (single) sentence :

"you hereby grant transfer and assign to zdh and its successors assigns and licensees collectively licensee a fully paid royalty free irrevocable perpetual worldwide right and license to publish distribute reproduce transmit use translate display perform modify revise create derivative works of and archive the material in any form or media now known or hereafter developed including without limitation in print magnetic or electronic form on any number of occasions in any form and to sublicense third parties to do any of the foregoing with further right of sublicense the license without compensation to you"

But its sooooo much fun!

[jasongetsdown]

c'mon man, don't be a buzzkill. Look at all these techies flaunting their copyright knowledge! This is a huge self esteem booster for all involved.
Dvorak gets to masturbate all over the pages of pcmag, and we get to catch him at it and tell his mommy! Its win-win!
Which is exactly what should be happening right now. Start writing to pcmag and telling them to staunch the steady flow of missinformation and downright lies. Start Clickin!

Ever since he called the Apple switch to Intel

[multiplexo]

(which he'd been predicting for the last decade or so) he's just been so full of himself. But you have to love Dvorak, despite the numerous bitch-slappings the tech industry has handed him for his wildly inaccurate predictions he keeps on soldiering along. You have to admire that dedication, even as it's annoying the fuck out of you.

Stop giving this guy press!

[core_dump_0]

"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."

Trendy? There are many of us who feel that intellectual property is morally wrong. I feel that the entire intellectual property system should be abolished and replaced with laws protecting against fraud and plagiarism. Creative Commons is for those people.

"First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?"

With Creative Commons, you are allowed to choose between a noncommercial and a commercial license. I choose the Attribution-ShareAlike because I really don't care if someone decides to sell my Web page or MODs (my software is GPL), so long as I can sell it, too, and my name is protected. Intellectual property is a "special favor" by a government and is thus incompatible with true capitalism. If someone can sell something at a lower price than I can (or for free), then I better compete with them.
This applies to the RIAA, too. I remember when Napster was big and broadband was small, Tool decided to release their album in a special box set with artwork and a videotape. If the RIAA and MPAA cannot compete, they should be forced to play fair and go out of business.

"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."

From the NonCommercial-NoDerivs license front page:
"Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above."

"There's another thing that bugs me about Creative Commons. When you see its licenses the wording will say something like "Creative Commons License: Public domain." 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. Yet you see this over and over as if it were!"

That's just advocacy for an organization, and nothing else.

"There was always something about Creative Commons and its name that bugged me, too. The name sounds like a variation of the once-powerful Common Cause political-action committee. A ring of days gone by--nostalgia."

Hmmm, I seem to remember Common Cause recently working with the EFF to try and lobby for e-voting paper trails or something like that.

"Years ago, to gain a copyright, you had to fill out a form and send in the material to the Library of Congress. Now you just use the word "copyright," add your name and a date, and publish it. What could be easier? Apparently simplicity was more than some people could handle, so they invented Creative Commons to add some artificial paperwork and complexity to the mechanism. And it seems to actually weaken the copyrights you have coming to you without Creative Commons. Oh, brother!"

It's called "choice." Do you want to keep your copyright to yourself, or do you want to weaken it so that others may be more free?

--

Do us a favor, Slashdot, and stop giving this guy press.

Re:Stop giving this guy press!

[paulymer5]

I would have expected those who find intellectual property "morally" wrong would prefer public domain rather than retaining copyright. Protecting againt plagiarism? That is precisely one of the points of intellectual property. If you do not claim any property over ideas, then how could someone be stealing them? Perhaps you mean that you find the extensive control modern intellectual property laws grant "morally" restrictive. In that case, yes, I agree with you, Creative Commons is an excellent solution for those who wish to allow certain uses of their work while retaining their intellectual property.

Re:Stop giving this guy press!

[core_dump_0]

"If you do not claim any property over ideas, then how could someone be stealing them?"

It wouldn't be stealing, it would be fraud.
For example:

Joe writes and records Song A.
Jane records a cover of Song A and states in the liner notes that she wrote it.
Jane would (under my proposal) be punished for lying to the public.

Anyone can claim ownership over anything if they have the force to back them up. Hell, if I had the force to back me up, I could claim photosynthesis as my own and demand money from every farmer and gardener in the world. Or even better, royalties from every person for the use of gravity. Now you can say the same thing about land and objects, but it just isn't practical (or civil) for two people to claim ownership over the same bathroom at the same time. Therefore, property should be treated as a necessary evil for the purposes of maintaining a civil society. And intellectual property is clearly an *unnecessary* evil, since it reduces competition and drives up prices, including the prices of medicine which stifles the ability of the poor to get proper medical treatment.

I use Creative Commons rather than Public Domain as a practical measure due to the lack of laws against plagiarism and fraud. If copyright was an option but there were anti-deception laws applying to Public Domain works, I would use Public Domain for my works.

To Dvorak: RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

He claims he doesn't get CC and didn't even bother to watch the animated flash videos that allows even a moron to understand the rationale behind CC? Oh well maybe he is using flashblock

Re:A+ for Dvorak. F for Slashdot.

[pclminion]

I'd wager 90% of those who have bashed his article haven't even looked at what's on the books. And wouldn't understand it if they had.

What a sparkling endorsement of the law -- "Our law is so ridden with bullshit, even intelligent people can't comprehend it!" What's your point again?

Are you kidding?

[coolGuyZak]

Heck, this could become the world's largest drinking game!

It already is.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Daravon]

Yeah, from the "quality material" coming out of /. anymore, it would appear the editors are having a blast doing shots.

He just needs a remapping

[chriso11]

Maybe Dvorak's output needs to be remapped to account for the Dvorak keyboard; something like Y->T, P->R, O->S (or is it the orther way around?). He may make a lot more sense in that manner...

the name sounds dumb

[llZENll]

"the name sounds dumb"

Clearly he has thought this through. All hail! King of the losers! :D

Re:the name sounds dumb

[Knuckles]

Thanks for a bit of light relief.

I've been reading through hundreds of comments. Each thread starts with someone (astroturfers or what?) pretending to not get the whole thing in a similar way to Dvorak ("what do I need CC for, I already have all rights under copyright").

This although it is painfully obvious that the whole concept is just like free/open software license, just a bit organized, and with the goal of creating a pool of content searchable by license terms.

I got increasingly annoyed, so, thanks :)

Dvorak doesn't get it

[UninvitedCompany]

I use the Creative Commons license for a wide variety of work that I create -- text and photos contributed to Wikipedia, sheet music, and Ogg audio recordings of classical music that I have made.

The first thing to be understood is that Creative Commons has several licenses that it encourages content creators to use. In addition to the noncommercial license the Dvorak has reviewed, there are licenses available that permit commercial use, with attribution, with varying permissions for derived works. I use the "attribution-share alike" license, which is similar in its goals to the GPL but differs in its details.

The second thing to understand is that the licenses the Creative Commons provides are international in scope. Fair use rights and the nature of copyright varies considerably from place to place, and fair use rights in the United States are stronger than those in many other places. The nature of copyright also varies, with some jurisdictions refusing to recognize public domain materials or having a much lower bar for minimum creative effort required to obtain copyright. This has created problems with the mutopia project, which requires international copyright clearance because it has mirrors worldwide. The Creative Commons "public domain license" addresses these issues.

Like any standardized license, the adoption of a standard license text minimizes the problems for aggregation and reuse that can occur when various entities try to develop their own open source licenses, as has happened with so many software projects. Musicians and writers would do well to recognize this and adopt the Creative Commons licenses rather than making their own.

Dvorak places great faith in being able to obtain permissions for copyrighted works he wishes to reuse. That's fairly straightforward for a blog article that's a year old, but is almost impossible for older material still in copyright. I've tried. Often the original copyright holder can't be located, or the copyright has passed to heirs or other successors who aren't interested in relicensing or who want unreasonable fees. I don't want that to happen to creative works that I create. Fifty years from now, if someone else is working on a sheet music project, I want them to be able to use the material I have created as a starting point, regardless of what my heirs or attorneys think.

Finally, the Creative Commons has addressed many of the shortcomings of the GFDL that the FSF has refused to grapple with, among them the requirement for including the 8-page long license text with every copy or derivative work (a problem for someone who wants to reuse a photo for a postcard, for example), and the overly restrictive DRM limitations.

Dvorak's article is short on facts and long on opinions that appear not to be informed by the needs of content creators who are out there today making open-source content using digital media of all kinds.

Spelling corrections

[FLAGGR]

"In a recent article, John Dvorak trashes [himself] as being, 'one of the dumbest [people] to ever put forth [an opinion about] the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.'

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

So "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" basically means: read ZDNet, John Dvorak, Robert X. Cringley, and IGN for all my nerd news???

Slashdot has become the "ooh! shiny colors on the topic page!" site equivalent of Google News (which is in BETA test still!). The only added value this site provides to the Internet is a place for geeks like me to make fun of the clueless "editors" who are really just glorified webpage admins. (Since they obviously choose not to read, or can't read, 100% of all news submissions made to this site.) Why not just let the entire community aggregate their own news? Oh yeah, then this place would turn into Kuro5hin, I forgot...

slight rewording produces truth

[rubycodez]

'John Dvorak is one of the dumbest writers ever put forth by the tech pub community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the National Enquiror prints real news'

He doesn't get it?

[windowpain]

Dvorak is a bright guy. But he can't suss out the biggest single benefit of Creative Commons? Here it is, John:

I've made some songs with a program called Dance eJay.

By using the CC license I tell the world that if you want to listen to them on your iPod, swap them with your friends or whatever, that's fine.

But if Nike or Coca-Cola wants to use one of them in a commercial, they have to talk to me about it. And pay me what I demand or take a hike.

I don't want to put them in the public domain because if lightning strikes and some big company stumbles upon them and wants to use one, I want to get paid. But since that's not likely to happen, everybody wang chung tonight. Download your ass off.

What's so hard to understand about that?

Dvorak doesn't get it: CC expands commons

[Morganth]

Creative Commons isn't about gaining any rights over your work. It is about voluntarily giving up some rights on your work in order to promote the sharing of knowledge and art, or, more generally, content.

Everyone here is right: Creative Commons doesn't give you more rights than traditional copyright laws. But Creative Commons isn't about GIVING you, the content creator, more rights. It's about giving the READER/AUDIENCE more rights to be CREATIVE with that content and do something with it, without having to worry about getting sued.

Under current copyright law, if I take a photograph and put it on a website, no one else has the right to use that photograph, commercial or otherwise. (If they do use it, I have a choice: sue or not, and let them debate "fair use" in court). Likewise, if I am an independent film maker and want to use a photograph in my movie, I need to be especially wary, since if I don't get clearance and I release my movie, I can be seriously sued.

In that sense, what Mr. Lessig and his associates have tried to do is "expand the commons," which has been shrinking due to "automatic copyright protection." These licenses allow you to opt out of that automatic protection, while still explicitly stating the protection you want (for example, the "By" license allows you attribution for works reused in derivative works).

This is a noble goal. For anyone who has read Lessig's material (he has a book called "Free Culture" available for free online), his big crusade is simply to allow creativity to still flourish in a society where corporate Intellectual Property interests have made the copyright system tilted "too far in favor of content creators." Everyone wants protection for creative work, but sometimes creative goods can come out of building upon prior creative works (such as remixing music, altering/compositing photographs, rephrasing texts, etc.) But what we don't want is a public who is fearful to remix, reuse, or even just show off creative works, for fear of serious legal penalty.

Perhaps Dvorak should actually research why CC was founded before he mounts a criticism. His conclusion says it all: "Apparently simplicity was more than some people could handle, so they invented Creative Commons to add some artificial paperwork and complexity to the mechanism. And it seems to actually weaken the copyrights you have coming to you without Creative Commons." That's right Dvorak. That's because weakening the copyright protections you have is the point. How else do you expand the commons? By giving yourself a stronger right to sue?

Who is this guy again?

[jeepmeister]

Read his bio at http://www.dvorak.org/shortbio.htm Dvorak spews for a living in copyrighted publications. Those are his credentials. End of story. Dvorak's boss likes him because when Dvorak spews he makes that publication's WinTel buying readership feel better about their own bad decisions. Ultimately Dvorak's drivel to an uninformed readership contributes to subscription renewals. That's it. Dvorak's publisher made Dvorak an authority and handed Dvorak his credentials because he sells magazines.

The Point of Creative Commons

[rhanneken]

As far as I can tell, the point of Creative Commons is to provide a convenient way to signal others (with a logo and maybe a short descriptive phrase) that they have certain rights with respect to your work. That's it. Contrary to what Dvorak seems to be saying, there's no requirement that you prohibit others from using your work for commercial purposes. I don't understand why Dvorak thinks Creative Commons involves paperwork or permission, and I don't see how it undermines copyright law.

Rarely have I seen a columnist miss the point so completely. It's unfortunate that the Creative Commons people didn't respond to his email, as they might have saved him considerable embarassment.

Why attack Creative Commons?

[Craig Maloney]

Creative Commons allows me the freedom to put my work out there in a distributable format without people nickel-and-diming me for permission to use it. (Not that they're banging down my door to begin with :) ) I've released music under the Creative Commons license. (Click here if you're interested). If people want to use it, they're welcome to it without having to ask me to use it. I'm OK with this. If I wasn't OK with this, I'd license it under different circumstances, or I'd release myself from copyright responsibility by releasing my stuff under the Public Domain. I'm not interested in relinquishing my stuff to that level quite yet, but the Creative Commons gives me the freedom to make this work the way I'm most comfortable. If John Dvorak doesn't get it, then John might want to use something different. John, stop piddling in our pool because you don't get it.

b-but, Dvorak was right about Apple!

[jafac]

So - that means he MUST be right about this too, right?

Re:b-but, Dvorak was right about Apple!

[Infonaut]

You mean this prediction? ;-)

"Folks, the Mac platform is through... ." - John C. Dvorak, 1998

Nope, he doesn't get it...

[rmdir -r *]

From TFA:

There are several things that bother me about this initiative. First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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.

The emphasis was mine. Now, check this out from the Creative Commons web site:

Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any taker, and only on certain conditions.

What conditions? Our site will let you mix and match such conditions from the list of options below. There are a total of eleven Creative Commons licenses to choose from.

Ahem. First: IT IS A LICENSE. Just like the GPL, the MPL, the BSD license and ten thousand others. It.Is.A.License. Which means that I can release my work, explicitly tell people what they can do with it, and under what terms. The CC guys are releasing pre-written licenses that cover common situations, which is a Good Thing(tm) because every dweeb who writes some crappy web novel isn't forced to write his own license, and because it promotes explicit licensing of individual's work before it becomes an issue- like when some other dweeb steals it and puts their name on it.

There, see Dvorak? That wasn't so hard. It has a purpose. To promote explicit licensing (a prophylactic, to be sure) and to promote sane licensing so content can be re-used.

Re:Nope, he doesn't get it...

[kirkjobsluder]

Ahem. First: IT IS A LICENSE. Just like the GPL, the MPL, the BSD license and ten thousand others. It.Is.A.License. Which means that I can release my work, explicitly tell people what they can do with it, and under what terms.

And just like the boilerplate Ziff-Davis license:

Copyright © 1996-2005 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. PC Magazine is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Media Inc. is prohibited.

If you just ignore him he'll go away.

[CptSkippy]

We all know Dvorak is crazy, if we keep acknowledging his existance he'll never go away.

Re:If you just ignore him he'll go away.

[QuasiEvil]

I doubt he's going away any time soon - this doofus has been writing inflammatory stuff for years. The problem is people that are less informed will first hear of CC from Dvorak and get the preconception that it's a dumb idea. We really need a way to confront people like this.

Re:If you just ignore him he'll go away.

[CptSkippy]

**Knock**Knock**
"Who is it?"
"Goons, Hired Goons."

HARRY POTTER IS PUBLIC DOMAIN!!!11!ONE!

[Jack9]

If I write something on my blog, for example, and decide not to cover it with the general copyright notice, I can simply say that it is in the public domain and be done with it.

You have to make a legally traceable announcement to this effect. Preferably some type of documentation. If your children want to sue for infringement in the future, they will attempt to invalidate any passing comments made (or may have made, there's the rub) on a blog. Who knows if that's legally binding?

I do not need permission from Creative Commons, nor do I need to mention Creative Commons or anything else. It's in the public domain by my personally allowing it to be so. This is my right!

Dvorak, without specifically releasing it, your right isn't asserted. Listen up, shouting I MAKE HARRY POTTER PUBLIC DOMAIN!!! results in no legal consequence. NO SURPRISES THERE. CC helps you assert this right, idiot. Apparently, in America you need to properly cross your T's to even RELEASE a work into PD.

P.S.

[Spock the Baptist]

Marliyn Manson is Goth's answer to Eric Von Zipper.

John C. Dvorak

[be-fan]

I stopped reading his crap a decade ago. It's interesting to see that he's still one of the stupidest people in tech journalism, and that he apparently hasn't shut up since then.

Dumbest article ever

[Knuckles]

I haven't read a single comment yet, but I'm sure many will point out specific points in the article.
I personally just want to go on record saying what I said in the subject. The guy has not understood one bit of what he's talking about.

Thank you

Career Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me, or does every week Dvorak (poorly) write some flamebait-like article? By my count he's been running on fumes for at least 5 years now and can only resort to this type of baiting in order to get someone to want to read his article.

If we ignore him, do you think he will go away?

What Do You Expect From A Pig...

[johnos]

But a grunt?

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean my grandkids will own all my writing exclusively until 75 years after I'm dead,

Dvorak has offspring? Run! For the love of god, run!

Internet history lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

He is not really a troll. He just publishes flamebait. It is not like anything he publishes is offensive in itself. It is just lacking in insight and is intended to create controversy.

Ahem. As a geek who was on Usenet 15 years ago, let me assure you, the original poster is correct in his terminology. The "intended to create controversy" part (especially, when done for it's own sake) is the classical definition of a troll.

It refers to someone who is metaphorically fishing, trolling out his lines, and waiting for someone (or multiple people) to take the bait, by responding to him.

Casting out "flamebait" is just one kind of trolling; it's the equivalent of throwing chum into the waves to attract sharks. More subtle forms of trolling are designed to stir up controversy and to get people worked up; just like you admit Dvorak has done.

Since "fishing for a response" is antisocial behaviour, other people looked for a concise insult to apply them. They called them "trolls", because they "trolled" (fished) for responses, and because "troll" is the name of an antisocial monster from European folklore.

So, in the classical sense of the word, Dvorak is indeed a "troll". I read his columns 15 years ago, and they were filled with as much hot air then as now. I was surprised, and a little disappointed, to learn that he's still shooting off his mouth for a living....

As such, it really is not that different from a lot of the posts here on /.

Yup. The content of a lot of the postings on slashdot leave a lot to be desired, and some of us still remember how it once was. I remember when Usenet was for university students only; the level of care, attention to detail, and reasoning was so vastly different that I remember being critical of a few spelling errors per page. On Slashdot, I'm happy if the majority of a post is in more or less correct English. Times have changed, kids... and not all for the better.

Grammar corrections

[katz]

"In a recent article, John Dvorak trashes [himself] as being, 'one of the dumbest [people] to ever put forth [an opinion about] the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rollingly dumb on the same scale as believing that the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.'

- Roey

Answering Divorak on "commercial activity"

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't check the CC license recently to see if it does have this nasty provision about "commercial purposes:"

First, Creative Commons is similar to a license. You sign up with the group and post a message saying that your material is protected or covered by Creative Commons. 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?

... but if it does, the explanation is quite easy and is followed by several other academic websites that post interesting historical texts, although not, to their great credit, by Project Gutenberg. All try to assert a pseudo-copyright on works long in the public domain and prohibit "commercial use." There's even a university science consortium that launders public domain NASA photos, probably with tax money, and claims that gives them the right to excude certain uses, including bizarrely, both gang activity and religious groups. "Exactly what evil use," I asked myself, "do drug gangs make of a photo of the Horsehead Nebula? And why link them to a little rural Methodist church?" Don't ask. You're in academia where nothing is as it seems.

Face the facts Divorak! These academic sources prohibit "commerical activity" because, as faculty members of state unversities (and heavily tax-subsidized private ones), they are morally superior to dirty little pond scum like you, a writer who is probably paid by the word. They turn up their noses at people who must grub about in the work-a-day world, without tenure and hoping people will be willing to pay money for the magazines in which they write. How demeaning! Going cap in hand to ordinary folk like a traveling tinker.

Like lords of estates in medieval Europe, they don't have to ask for the money for their salaries and pet projects. They take it from whoever they choose or, even better, the State takes the money for them from ordinary working stiffs like plumbers. The State gives it to them because their thoughts and words are infinitely superior to those of the said working stiff. Why they not only read the NY Times every day to find out what to think, they write an occasional article for it.

That's your answer Divorak! You don't know your proper place in society. They're at the top of the food chain. You're at the bottom. They're the Ubermann, you're the Untermenschen. Heck, you probably don't even know what those two words mean.

Like it or lump it, that's the way it is. Creative Commons isn't for your sort, so stay out. Don't you see the sign on their website that says: "No Nig... err... Commerically Motivated Allowed." Sheesh, are you stupid! Now get to the back of the bus where you belong.

--Name withheld so they can't get nasty with me too.

P.S. And yes, I know the CC license has useful purposes in spite of its sometimes sneering, NPR-like political correctness. I've used it myself.

Re:Answering Divorak on "commercial activity"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Dvorak", there's no "i".

What does Dvorak want?

[__aazofn1209]

When I first read the article I felt angry.

But then I realized, at some point you need to sit back and remember that people have different motives for doing things. For example, when Dvorak writes a column, his goal is to generate ad revenue for his employer. Factual accuracy and an even-handed approach to the issues don't do much for that goal.

Consent and Fair Use

[natrius]

Dvorak harps on about how Creative Commons licensed works hurt his ability to ask someone for permission to copy their work. It does nothing of the sort. If you want to use a Creative Commons licensed work in a way not approved by the license, you ask the creator just like you would otherwise. The reasoning behind the noncommercial license he derides is that the author wants commercial uses to be paid for. That's no different from works under full copyright.

You can still quote Creative Commons licensed writings all you want. The license doesn't affect fair use at all. The only time you need to worry about getting a license to copy a work is when it exceeds fair use.

If you're going to denounce somethign with such vitriol, you should probably at least understand it first.

Try Bugroff License - It's simpler...

[refactored]

The "No problem Bugroff" license.

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation devised, in addition to some marvelous software, the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Or the CopyLeft it is sometimes called.

It is quite a revolutionary document, using the "copyright" tool to to protect your right to use free software.

Unfortunately using copyright to protect free software is a lot like using a Jackal to guard the hens.

In fact, various inconveniences relating to this have resulted in modifications such as the LGPL (Library General Public License) and more recently the NPL (Netscape Public License)

I call these matters mere inconveniences, the real damage will occur when the Jackal's, (sorry, I mean lawyers), actually get to test the GPL in court for the first time.

Thus enter my version.

Its very simple.

Entirely consistent.

Completely unrestrictive.

Easy to apply.

The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...

The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

All portions of this license are important..

• "Sure, no problem." Gives you complete freedom. I mean it. Utterly complete. A bit of a joke really. You have complete freedom anyway.
• "Don't worry, be happy." Apart from being good advice and a good song, it also says :- No matter what anyone else says or does, you still have complete freedom.
• Now bugger off. The only way to get rid of pushy Jackals is to ignore them and not feed them. The GPL is just begging somebody to take it to court. Can't you just see it. Exactly the same thing that happened when some twit (not Linus) registered Linux as his own personal trademark. People got upset, started a fund, and hired, off all ruddy things, a Jackal to try and defend the chicken! Who really benefits from this trademark / patent / copyright thing anyway? The lawyers. Who made it up in the first place? The lawyers.

OK so the last part of the license sounds a bit harsh, but seriously folks, if you are a :-

• Lawyer asking these legalese questions... You should go off and learn an honest trade that will actually contribute to life instead of draining it.
• Programmer asking these legalese questions... You have amazingly powerful tools in your hands and mind, use them to ask and answer the worthwhile questions of life, the universe and everything. Stop mucking about with such legal nonsense and get back to programming.
• User/reader asking these question... Don't worry. Go off and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy what has been created for you.

Re:Try Bugroff License - It's simpler...

[poopdeville]

Thus enter my version. Its very simple. Entirely consistent. Completely unrestrictive. Easy to apply. The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows... The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is.... Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

Can I have the exclusive right to distribute the text containing your license?

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

Then I suggest you take down your website before I sic my lawyers on you.

Re:Try Bugroff License - It's simpler...

[refactored]

Sure, No problem.

Don't worry, be happy.

Now bugger off!

There are Other licenses

[fergj]

The Creative Commons license doesn't alter the situation with respect to commercial use. If John wants to republish something in a commercial setting which is covered by the CC license, all he need do is to contact the author (Bill, the copyright holder) and negotiate a license to republish it under some other license more to his liking. All that's necessary is that John and Bill reach an agreement, sign a document, perhaps pay a consideration, and otherwise do whatever John would have had to do if it had been originally distributed under some other license.

Greasemonkey script?

[mpontes]

Will anyone write a Greasemonkey script that ignores all the articles that mention Dvorak, the only person on the world that is paid for trolling? Oh, wait, I just uninstalled Greasemonkey... :(

Re:Greasemonkey script?

[windowpain]

What!?!?! And miss all that important coverage of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard!?!?!?

Noncommercial considered Harmful

[ka9dgx]

When I read the fine article, I happened to find myself agreeing, fairly strongly, with Mr Dvorak.

We're all being creative, we want credit, fame and fortune for our efforts. We all object strongly to someone else taking the credit, without having done any work of their own to add to it.

The copyright system is a crude tradeoff to try to reward creative effort. It works, somewhat, but we want a better set of tools.

The GPL, BSD license, CC, and numerous other license are all the result of efforts to provide a those tools. They all involve tradeoffs, but are positive on the whole.

What Mr Dvorak had the audacity to state publicly, is that the "NonCommerical" licenses which seem to be popular, might not be a good idea in the long run.

I don't have $34BN revenue stream like M$, but I find myself in the same exact spot as them when someone chooses to use the NoCC options. I might take their cool picture, and use it along with others, and add years worth of work to get it all perfect... but if I decide to sell the result for a buck, I just violated the license. There needs to be a better middle ground.

Commercial/NonCommercial is an artificial distiction that should be considered harmful. It's interesting to note that the Creative Commons website itself, uses the CC:BY license, which DOES allow commercial derivatives.

--Mike--

Re:Noncommercial considered Harmful

[QuasiEvil]

Maybe C/NC is artificial, but I still happen to think it's a good distinction.

I have a large collection (and ever getting larger) of railway photographs. Yes, I'm not only a geek, I'm worse... I'm a railfan. All of these that I've published on my website, in addition to the articles I write, are covered by a CC license that prohibits commercial use. I don't mind if other enthusiasts like myself reprint my work, or republish my photos, etc., because they do it for the love of the hobby and often for the historical documentation it provides.

That, at least to me, is a "purer" motivation than a guy trying to sell DVDs of railroad images to make a quick buck. Or even of someone writing a book about the history of the ASDF branch of the YXZ railroad. They're still going to be making a buck off of it. In my view, if you do it purely out of devotion to the hobby or to historical documentation, then you're contributing to the greater good of at least a subset of society. Your efforts to contribute to the greater good are payment enough for me. If you say, "Well, I'm writing this for history, but I deserve to be financially compensated for my effort," my response is similar - I deserve to be compensated, because I contributed to your efforts.

Think of it as a matching donation scheme. :)

Comments serve Creative Commons

[Njall]

Pay attention now. Dvorak may NOT be the most affable of commentators; nevertheless his articles, this one included, often serve to bring attention to an otherwise ignored topic. His comment might be looked upon as the pin prick to get your attention. "Do you feel this?" Or, "Look here."

Reasonably intelligent public discussion about Creative Commons licensing is FAR superior to completely reasonable public ignorance. Be honest, he got you to look didn't he?

Except it's not text

[RiffRafff]

Stardragon.txt does not appear to be text. At least, not ASCII text. Dozens of weird characters on the first page alone.

The pdf looks okay, as does the rtf in Open Office. But I can't directly import those into my Newton. :(

Ah, well. I guess I'll see how the html version formats in my Newt. ;)

Re:Except it's not text

[mbrother]

I think someone on the web may have done a version for the Newton -- try a few google searches. I had several people volunteer to do new or better versions of the book since I'm not an expert at this and neither is my webmaster. The pdf version is the best thanks to a motivated fan, but as you say not every platform takes pdf.

dumber than dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

what really IS dumb on a scale like the emperors new clothes.. is people making sure morons like this gets lots of attention through slashdot.org..

now that.. is dumb

A filmmaker's perspective

[robyannetta]

All views below are personal opinion only and considered free speech, legally protected under the First Amendment of the Bill Of Rights. Reading this post constitutes acceptance of these terms.

Upon reading the front page quote from Dvorak, the first thing I wanted to do is put my fist through the 19in CRT.

I couldn't believe John Dvorak would say something like this. Upon reading his article/rant/blithering-ichor, I've come to the realizaion that JD never bothered to read any of the CC licences. Then I started to laugh.

As a filmmaker, I wouldn't even be able to LEGALLY and freely distribute my productions on the web. As the copyright owner, I control the licence with CC. Personally, I've chosen the by-nc-nd licence to allow for free, unlimited personal use. Commercial uses are stricly controlled. You have the freedom with CC to create virtually any kind of licence you want for any type of original work.

Why is this harmful, JD? Why isn't empowering copyright owners with freedoms to "give" their work away threaten you?

Re:A filmmaker's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Please enlighten me as to why you can't legally distribute your productions on the web in the absence of CC. If you own the copyright, then you can do damn well what you please, including (for example) setting up a torrent.

Time for a new category

[jesterzog]

Perhaps Slashdot needs a new category for trolling/flamebait articles, which people such as Dvorak get automatically.

That way we can block them from the front page in the same way that people started to block Katz articles a while ago, and others can continue to flame and point out the flaws in what he says.

Copyright Conundrum

[Sundroid]

"Creative Commons" notice clearly does something -- it tells people to go ahead, don't be shy, take whatever you like and use it, but just don't use it to make money. "Copyright 2005 by So-and-So" notice basically says that you need the author's approval to use his creative work for whatever purpose.

The use of Creative Commons notice is a choice. Mr. Dvorak seems to be huffing and puffing over something he would not choose to use anyway. If the significance of Creative Commons puzzles him, this long essay of his is an even more puzzling non sequitur.

I'm a blogger/amateur graphic artist; in my blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, I offer the graphics I created to anyone who wants it, without copyright concern. I am also a novelist who has just published a novel, "Unwrapped" (at http://www.lulu.com/content/138218), which is protected by the standard copyright notice. Two different things. Yet somehow this simple reality seems to be taxing the brain cells of a well-known columnist of a major publication.

who knew?

[enrico_suave]

You could get a job as a tech columnist in a major magazine/site by being a troll...

CC is not really a hard concept to understand.

As the creator of a work, I can actively choose which "license" fits how I wish my content to be re-used. One excellent example of how this can come into play is how Cory Doctorow used the developing country license for his latest sci-fi novel.

If picaso had the option to use a CC license for his work, maybe you wouldn't have the problem with copyright all these years later... (example from the article)

The difference between CC and regular old copyright is that with CC the artist has some choice/say in the matter of how they're work can be redistributed.

Speaking of fair use, how well does the current system work? See this example of a person who contacted 7 movie studios to try and get clearance for some clips for a noncommercial home movie project (seemingly well within fair use?)

e.

Always Annoying

[BrianMarshall]

John Dvorak... Isn't this the guy who (used to) write columns in Byte(?) with words in all CAPITALS, sort of an ALTERNATIVE to poking you in the CHEST.

I believe that I have been annoyed by everything I have ever read by this guy.

Re: your .sig

[Knuckles]

It _is_ working, as it assists in silent militarization of everyday life, just like the war on terror (now in most places, in the 70ies mostly in Europe (RAF, Brigate Rosse, ...))

It never was meant to actually be about drugs

Stop giving the open source movement undue credit.

[jbn-o]

Is he [Dvorak] just dissing on CC or all open source licenses [...]

I certainly hope this is not the start of trying to give the open source movement more credit for work it did not do. Creative Commons licenses are not licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative and for good reason. CC licenses are not to be used for computer software. The Creative Commons organization lists the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL as licenses to consider for software. People on /. routinely cite the GPL as an "open source" license despite that:

• the Open Source Initiative merely lists the GNU GPL as an approved license. This is nothing compared to writing the license,
• the GNU GPL was written many years before the open source movement began and is therefore clearly independent of the open source movement,
• the GNU GPL talks about software freedom -- a different philosophy than the open source movement holds -- and the open source movement takes pains to avoid discussing software freedom,
• and the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation, not the Open Source Initiative. Richard Stallman, the GPL's chief author, takes every opportunity to clarify that he is not now nor has he ever been a member of the open source movement. He wishes people would stop lumping the FSF's work in with that of the open source movement.

It's hard to respect any columnists anymore...

[writermike]

Despite some protests to the contrary, Dvorak used to write some pretty interesting and technical stuff a long time ago. (A long, LONG time ago.) But he and many of his colleagues have simply turned from interesting insightful commentary to writing anything that will get eyeballs.

I used to be very naïve about this. I used to believe that columnists, through their transparant attempts for readership, tried to be fair and honest about what they did. Then I heard an interview with a pretty prominent columnist at an even more prominent newspaper say that she routinely wrote things SHE disagreed with because the point of writing a column is to get people talking.

So, they can and will say anything to get readers. Many of you may think this is a "duh" moment, but it was amazing for me. Dvorak could write an article about how "some people" think that, for instance, Linus is evil and should be dead. (Hey, it's plausible. I'm sure in the entire world there are two people that don't like Linus enough and wish he were dead.) That'll generate a lot of controversy and get more readers. But is it right?! Where's the line?

More and more often, it seems like there isn't any line.

It's clear to me now. Columnists are professional trolls.

(Heh. I guess this means that all those folks that get modded down will wind up working in "journalism" some day. Quite possible. Imagine! A G.N.A.A. feature. Some trolls can dream.)

It goes by the name "Scientific Method" too...

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Creative Commons" goes by another name in the wider world "The scientific method". Basically in engineering terms, it's a self correcting continuous feedback cycle. Think flyball governer for research and development. I am not surprised that old Johnny would go about bashing it, he being the nerdy intellectual that he is... And you only have to look at all of the wonder and magic out of the proprietary (read super-duper secret) alchemy of the middle ages and compare all that it gave us versus that stupid "creative commons" chemistry with everyone sharing information and everything. That will never go anywhere!!! So keep on John! You just keep blowing as hard as you can! One of these days, everyone will see the world the same way you do!

Dvorak those comments were dumb, beyond dumb!

[PierceLabs]

There are people in the world who do want to contribute their works to people who aren't going to exploit them commercially. That's their right! If they don't want commercial entities to have access to it, move on and spend some money to get commercial use of those items. On top of which (the beyond dumb), there are PLENTY of things in CreativeCommons that ARE usable in the commercial space if the copyright owner so permits. Man I guess its true that reading IS becoming a lost area.

What CreativeCommons has done, is provide a fairly simple, understandable end-user level license agreement for content providers to give limited distribution rights to their works. CreativeCommons is far clearer than having works under GPL and LGPL and much more straightforward than hoping that people understand copyright law enough to know what counts as allowable and disallowed distribution.

I can't believe someone who professes to even speak intelligently about the community could be so clueless and detached from some of the issues currently in the industry.

The man can't do research.

[Proteus]

Hm, Dvorak wonders what CC sets out to do, and then says crap about how CC makes it seem like you're losing your fair-use rights, and that you have no way to use something for a commercial purpose. Now, the simple fact that the "no comercial uses" clause is optional, the following appears on ever CC Deed (the plain-English version of the license that clicking anyone's CC grant button will take you to):

Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

The emphasis there isn't even mine, it's bold on the Deed. It's not like there's a lot to read, there, Dvorak -- the man clearly can't be bothered to do 30 seconds worth of actual research, but he can "beg" people to explain it to him without results? I smell a rat.

The more I articles I read by Dvorak

[SirCrashALot]

The less I respect him. At first, I was reading something on how windows was alienating its developer base by switching api's (I think), and it sounded good, but there was an article recently about zealots killing linux, and now this, the less sense he seems to be making.

Fuck Dvorak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid is as stupid does, John C.

That's just it...

[rbochan]

...obviously doesn't understand...

He _does_ understand. He's just trolling for ad hits.

Re:That's just it...

[jaseparlo]

I was thinking that he's actually done the Creative Commons movement a service. After all, anything he touts as the next big thing generally disappears into oblivion soon afterwards, so dismissing it as irrelevant is surely some kind of guarantee of success.

Copyright isn't an absolute right...

[Famatra]

"Under normal copyright law, for someone to take a piece of your work and do something with it, even if it's post it in their blog, is an infringement of copyright."

Depends on how small the 'piece' is you mention, quotes are protected by fair use. In some cases you can copy entire chapters, especially if it is for educational (and private) use. In the united states, from the United States Copyright Act of 1976, the amount of material able to be used via 'fairuse' depends on :

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Thus copyright isn't an absolute right, it is limited by fair use, educational provisions, etc.

Dvorak insecure about his ignorance, lashes out.

[JonLesser]

Right on Anonymous Coward.

What Dvorak can't figure out is how CC can "improve" his copyrights, i.e. make them stronger. When in fact the point of CC is to selectively give up copyright protections.

Dvorak view of "web elitists" sounds a lot like the conservative construct of the Liberal elitist. What is about people using a CC license that makes him so uncomfortable the size of his junk?

Frickin idiot.

[Klowner]

... 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?

Derrr, I see a large difference between a commercial entity selling my work for $20 a pop, as opposed to people sharing them freely. The main point behind the non-commercial thing is so some skill-lacking "businessman" sees your awesome art or whatever and decides to slap it on his $100 product and give no credit (money or fame) to the original author. That's what it tells you, dimwit.

My two cents.

CC is a Copyright Application

[NickFortune]

His main arguments are that CC unnecessarily complicates copyright law...

I really don't see how applying a set of rules makes the rules themselves more complicated. Do navigation sidebars complicate HTML? Does "grep" complicate the C programming language?

In both cases, the rules - the language in this case - are unchanged by the application. Dvorak is trolling as usual.

...and that the name sounds dumb

If you want "dumb", you've got to go a long way to beat "John Dvorak" IMHO.

On the name...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the name stinks, can we think of anything more nerdy?

What gets me is the response...

[Zancarius]

What really surprises me here is the response this has received from the Slashdot readership. I've only seen a few people point out the fundamental truth behind Dvorak's flamebait, and I can state it very simply--perhaps simply enough that even Dvorak might understand.

Creative Commons is neither a replacement for nor a substitute of Copyright Law. Creative Commons, like the GPL, is a license that works separately from Copyright. For instance, Microsoft owns the Copyright to the Windows Operating Shi^H^H^HSystem, but end users are allowed to use the OS under the terms and conditions specified by the EULA--a license that limits the user's rights in addition to the limitations of Copyright. All Creative Commons does is provide licenses that afford end users more extensive rights to distribute and/or modify a work under a CC license; the Copyright is still held by the author.

Unlike some posters, I do believe Dvorak is a troll. He is deliberately misrepresenting numerous facts, all of which are easily accessible on the Internet. Then again, I might be mistaken--perhaps he isn't misrepresenting facts and is, instead, just an idiot. He apparently doesn't know the difference between a license and a Copyright. I wish more Slashdot posters would debate on these terms, too, as it proves quite simply Dvorak is a published troll.

(Slightly off-topic: I'm really beginning to wonder if the Anonymous Coward is really just reserved for Dvorak so he can post incognito.)

So what?

[gone.fishing]

I know very little about "Creative Commons" but I do know that Dvoak is kind of the tecnical version of Andy Rooney. He is sort of a loud-mouth, curmudgeion who likes to make his opinions heard. In some ways, like Rooney, he is a reasonable man, his thought process seems a little narrow though (if he didn't think about it it must not be imporatant).

How many of his predictions have come to fruition? Does he do any better than the rest of us? I doubt it.

A jounalist like him has a pretty good gig. He has an audience that reads his every word and I am sure that he makes a pretty good living and, he has a kind of respect.

I do like his "personal portal" on his website and used it very frequently in my previous job. I've read may things that he has written that I have enjoyed (and taken with a grain of salt). I'm not willing to discount everything he says, but I sure as hell won't take what he says as gosiple either.

I did read that he sent emails to Creative Commons and that he did not recieve a reply. Hell, this is not a good idea to do to a person in his position. Any one should know that. So I guess in a very minor sense - on that one point, Creative Commons got what they deserved....

Still, my gut says he has as much wrong as he has right when it comes to Creative Commons. I don't know enough about it to know but that is what my gut says.

I'll wait and see. It should be interesting to see what things look like when the dust settles.

corrosive comments

[epine]

Dvorak is two shots and an olive short of a making a martini. Amazing what he can serve up from wood alcohol and a bottle of aftershave.

Re:Stop giving the open source movement undue cred

[Anonymous Coward]

The rod up your butt must have a rod up its butt

The GNU GPL is an open source source license. The CC licenses are similar in spirit to the Open Source Initiative. Nobody is saying anything about crediting anyone for anything.

self promoting corporate shill

[edjack]

That John Dvorak is a self-promoting corporate shill is only the opinion of myself and millions of others. That he's a misinformed idiot is just self-evident.

web comic starring John Dvorak: http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/

"open source" is just a description.

[Some Random Username]

The GPL IS an open source license, despite RMS's ludicrous blathering to the contrary. The source code is open, so it is open source. Its simply a descriptive term, it does not imply or require any sort of membership in any kind of club. The OSI guys do not own the words "open source", nor can they redefine the meaning of these words.

Saying open source is not the same as saying OSI, so you and RMS can both quit getting your panties in a bunch over nothing and trying to redefine the english language to suit your agendas.

Re:"open source" is just a description.

[Anonymous Coward]

they may not own "open source" but i think they own "Open Source(tm)" wrt software license.

Re:"open source" is just a description.

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS doesen't comment on "open source", but does on "free software"...

if you don't need it, don't use it

[wolftone]

I think that Dvorak is confused about the uses for the CC licenses. If all a person wants to do is retain all rights for creative work, then by all means, that person should indicate copyright status on their work. If all a person wants is to allow their work into the public domain, no problems, that's easy to accomplish. If a person doesn't know that all they need to do is indicate on their copyright status on their work, then Creative Commons, at the very least, offers a place for them to find that information freely and easily.

However, in the case of collaborative works, or artforms that involve the use of other artists' works, something with more specificity is very useful. In the case of improvised music, I can think of one fairly well known controversy from the 1960's in which La Monte Young's status as composer is -- or at least was -- disputed by some of the performers of these works. (There is some discussion on this by Young in a PDF linked to from this page.) This has made publication difficult or impossible, and it is possible that something like a CC license could have smoothed or resolved the tensions of the situation.

Perhaps Dvorak is onto something, though. It seems like the CC licenses are being used a lot; they seem to be fairly trendy, so it may be that they are being overused. Unfortunately, traditional copyrights fall short for many of today's forms of creation -- web journalism, hip hop, improvised music. Dvorak doesn't need a CC license to publish safely and protect his rights. I do, because in protecting my rights, I want to be able to limit or protect the rights of other people who want to be able to use my work.

You know what?

[millennial]

Fuck Dvorak. If he's gonna trash something that has such obvious benefits to the public at large, he has no right to my respect. He thinks that his celebrity grants him the right to be rude.
'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.'
Please. Don't be such a dick. Unless you have an alternative that seems better, don't bitch.

Besides, I'm a QWERTY guy anyways.

2nded

[Anonymous Coward]

In Other News...
Nobody gives a shit what John C. Dvorak thinks.

Simple.

[MadMacSkillz]

I'll get clobbered for this post but I don't care. It's really very simple... Dvorak is a FUCKING ASSHOLE. Next story, please?

Re:Creative Commons My Spiel...

[davidsyes]

I have an idea: Maybe Dvorak is trolling and if so, he is trolling for a reason. This could be a trial balloon for the special interest groups out to find out just how big a battle there will be if they try to strike down as illegal, illegitimate and without worthy foundation or precedent anything resembling Creative Commons.

Dvorak may himself be happy with current copyright law as it stands, but I worry about myself or others whose current or eventual creations get snapped up by mega-corporations, tycoons, elitists and other wealthy types who think that to shut down someone or raise the price of art they just need buy the last few legitimate copies and then keep them in exclusivist galleries or the like.

Well, I am not inclined to let my works escape my grasp-- alive or dead. I intend to wield heavy control over my creations -- well beyond Congress or some pea-brained official or some selfish elitist-- even from the grave.

See, with Creative Commons, I feel that I can just foist pieces of my works into the Public Domain and give it a super-copyright by making sure that if it is properly and INSTANTLY in public domain, no one individual can snap up and preclude my work from being used fairly by ALL who abide by some riders that I can write without needing a lawyer.

In fact, if more high school and college students would pay attention to rules of English (or their own native language if it is in what their laws are written) and DEMAND that their public officials remove the bullshit legalese and other clubby/cottage-industry-protecting mumbo-jumbo there is in contracts and just use language that is acceptable to and understood by the common denominator in the masses (not jurists and court officials and the various lobbyists...), then maybe, just maybe, countries (particularly the US, but increasingly so the "developing world") would make it illegal to produce more lawyers than are good for society.

Getting back on track... If I decide my works (writings, drawings, art, scribbles, doodles and such other than actual software which might be better served by directly GPL'ing or GNU'ing them) are to never fall into the hands of publication bureaus, printers and such who'd try to make sure to profit while paying me the absolute minimum they can get away with-- and drag me over the coals over the years, then that is my right. If I decide that Creative Commons is good for me, despite what Dvorak and others might feel, then I have the final word, the right, and the resolve to beat them back by any means (well, let's try to stay within the framework of the law, unless my utter destruction is at hand or in their hands directly, in which case remaining inside the framework of the law is as dangerous as asking a burglar to turn around so you can fell him while he's facing you...) necessary to preserve not only MY right, but to make sure the "rights of individuals" trumps the desires and machinations of the greedy.

Creative Commons **helps** me achieve a little bit more than the standard (or lawyer-enhanced) copyright laws or contracts might. I can immediately place works into the Public Domain to preemptively strike at and obstruct the otherwise exploitative and ruthless segments of the publishing world which has a greater sifting and shaking machine than the average person can even or ever hope to cope with.

Dvorak, you go right ahead and rely upon Copyright Law as it is. Maybe YOU are content to let the 75-year bit work for you. Then, maybe you'll turn in your grave if by accident one of your children or relatives mistakenly turns over works which rake in a bounty for then one who manipulates them out of the works. By doctoring my works with "Creative Commons, Instant and Irrevocable Immersion Into Public Domain All My Works I Declare to be Original and With the Exception of Well-Known/Provable Works Having Copyright/Ownership Established" (or, something to that effect), you can possibly avoid some BS in probabe, I can make sure your (I hope) that employers, elitists, and (othe

dvorak is an overly opinionated pessimist

[invarilin]

Dvorak's article screams pessimism. He uses meaningless rhetoric and personal opinion as an attempt to refute a positive organization. He misses the whole point of CC, because, as his article says, he doesn't understand it! His labeling of elitism and trendiness discredits every point he attempts to make in the article. In his argument regarding public domain, he fails to address the point that CC functions as a centralized information center and explanation of such a licensing system. The entire point is to inform individuals that your work can be used in such a manner without the author's permission. This is all explicitly stated on nearly every page of the site! The concept of public domain is not common knowledge to most individuals who have no experience with US copyright law. Creative Commons provides a simple and effective way to inform people about said accessibility. He's being an elitist himself by negating a system that promotes open Democracy!

"Open source" has a specific meaning for a reason.

[jbn-o]

Saying "the source code is open" was meaningless before the open source movement began. Today it is meaningful only because of the open source movement, started by the Open Source Initiative which defined the term "open source". They coined and defined the term precisely to avoid the ambiguity you're defending. There never was an issue of ownership of words (whatever that actually means), just widespread understanding that phrases in certain contexts have histories and meaning which allow us to communicate. Ironically, it is the FSF essay I pointed to which illustrates why the term needs to be defined and how even after definition people still don't seem to understand what that term actually refers to in this context.

It's a shame that your namecalling has received positive moderation. One would think that such language should be discouraged, and instead mod points should be given to considerate disagreement.

wth?

[destiney]

Is it just me or is John Dvorak trying to become the new John Kats or something?

Who the hell is Paul Graham?

[whatthef*ck]

And why should I give a shit about what he writes?

Re:Who the hell is Paul Graham?

[Momoru]

My sentiments exactly. Just do a search for him in the old stories. He's the guy that wrote the yahoo store, but spends all his time now writing long essays on subjects that he has no direct experience or knowledge of, and every other one gets linked front page to slashdot.

Re:Who the hell is Paul Graham?

[downbad]

On the contrary, Graham is lisp guru. His book "On Lisp" is widely considered a must-read within the lisp community, and his pet language "Arc" is shaping up quite nicely.

Favorite Marliyn Manson quote..

[TapeCutter]

"The world needs a scapegoat, so here I am." - Several years before Columbine became "his fault".

CC is very cool, Dorvak is not

[MarkWatson]

Sure, being the creative commoner of the week a few years ago makes me a little positively biased in favor of CC, but who but a big media company shill would not like CC?

Really. CC makes it easy to choose a license that lets you share your works while maintaining whatever degree of control you want. Simple really.

Like open source software, there are good reasons to participate in the 'gift economy' of sharing written and media works with others.

I dislike being critical of people, but: after reading Dorvak's article, it seems like maybe he spent all of 5 minutes trying to figure out CC, then gave up.

"Open source" like Xerox and Kleenex

[j_w_d]

... has lost any specificity over the years. The OS movement now extends well beyond any attempt at a narrower view and includes in most consciousnesses any license that guarantees open access to the source code to users of a piece of software. That is simply one of the realities of language. If you want to be more specific, then you need to offer your definition as what the term means to YOU. There is no guarantee that any particular individual will know what you mean without that extra effort and no universal understanding that you can rely on.

Re:"Open source" like Xerox and Kleenex

[WilliamSChips]

The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.

What about n+2 politicians?

Re:A+ for Dvorak. F for Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, CC is a similar concept to an Open Source license in that it builds on copyright - it doesn't deny it.

Both are nothing more than a standard way of granting additional rights in addition to those already provided by copyright - a way for the copyright holder to declare what rights they're willing to grant to people wanting to use the material they own.

As with the open source licenses, copyright is at the heart of the Creative Commons concept.

After RTFA

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I've read the article, and all I can say about it is... This is one of the dumbest articles 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 am dummer (sic) for having read it.

Two things about Dvorak

[LS]

1. Why is everyone up in arms about Slashdot giving front-page space to a controversial flamer instead of a real journalist? You're eating Dvorak's flamebait like ants on honey. And perhaps Slashdot stories are also selected for controversy instead of content, hmmmm?

2. Perhaps there is a conflict of interest here. Dvorak's job is specifically to create commercially copyrighted content. His article is about how openly copyrighted content is shit. Anyone see a connection?

LS

John who?

[gevantry]

Seriously. Do people still take this wonky wanker seriously? I stopped giving any credence to anything he said nearly 20 years ago, when he was hotly predicting Apple Computer's imminent demise. He has been so seriously wrong about so much, that I often wonder how much one special interest or another must be paying him to trash the competition. When Dvorak decides to trash something, it's a sure bet that it's probably something good. Maybe it's good that we have him around as a pointer to good things for that reason alone.

Dvorak Doesn't Get It

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1995, a computer game called Quake was released by id Software. It was open enough to permit large numbers of teenagers and teenagers-at-heart to produce add-ons to share among themselves. The intended purpose among many of those producing material was to share it with like-minded fans of the game - at no cost to the recipients.

The reward in doing so was to have one's self and one's work become known and appreciated by the game's community. This reward was not entirely without specific economic value, as some authors became employed (and their lives significantly changed) by game companies on the basis of their work.

One of the banes of the community were the "net scrapers", the unscrupulous pests who, in willful violation of copyright law, would download hundreds of author's add-ons, remove their copyright notices, cut a CD, and sell it as a commercial product.

I was annoyed by the blatant disregard for the little-guy copyright owners by various companies and put up a web site that exposed some of the worst of the violators with a combination of publication of exchanges about their activities and caustic commentary. As an archive documenting the willful violation of copyright by some large publishing houses, it got some attention and I believe helped to convince some of them to start contacting authors and asking permission to use their material.

In 1997, I got fed up with being ripped off, and with $10,000 in hand to spend on lawyers, approached a Seattle law firm that specialized in intellectual property with a pile of evidence against one particular violator. They had never seen anything like it and didn't know how to proceed. It seemed like something meriting class action status to them, but although they could see hard dollars being exchanged, they couldn't see hard dollars lost. The entire point of copyright law - keeping legal control of the right to copy in the hands of the owners - seemed irrelevant. Frustration was the outcome.

I believe it is this frusteration among individual copyright owners that has contributed to the formation of things such as Creative Commons. I don't know whether the Creative Commons license strengthens someone's position legally if they wish to distribute material solely for noncommercial use or not, but I can certainly understand the desire by some people to do so.

Dvorak doesn't see this, perhaps because he's never tried to distribute something for noncommercial purposes only to have it blatently stolen - repeatedly.

An essay I writed

[dpu]

Because I felt like it, and it while it's far from the stylin' prose of Mr. Dvorak, I think it was good for me.

http://russ.innereyes.com/2005/07/on-the-creative- commons/

Here is what Dvorak doesn't get...

[iwbcman]

Dvorak states in hist article,

There's another thing that bugs me about Creative Commons. When you see its licenses the wording will say something like "Creative Commons License: Public domain." 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. Yet you see this over and over as if it were!...Either this is incredibly pretentious or people do not know what public domain means. If I write something on my blog, for example, and decide not to cover it with the general copyright notice, I can simply say that it is in the public domain and be done with it. I do not need permission from Creative Commons, nor do I need to mention Creative Commons or anything else. It's in the public domain by my personally allowing it to be so. This is my right!

This is where Dvorak most obviously misunderstands what he is talking about. In a hypothetical world it would be nice if something could simply be placed in the 'public domain', particularly if one could simply choose to publish directly into the 'public domain' but such is, alas, wishful thinking.

Firstly, things only become 'public domain' once they have been abandoned, ie. no longer legally tied to any particular entity. The standard way in which such occurs is when the statue of limitation embodied in the copyright law expires. There is no legal way to put something directly into the 'public domain' because the 'public domain' is nothing other, however unfortunate it may be, than a catch-all legal framework for things which are no longer under any applicable licenses or laws. This is not what is meant by the spirit of the popular conception of public domain but legally this is what it is. I can even write 'public domain' and append it to a text that I have published but if someone else copies the text I have written beyond the regulations regarding 'fair use' they have still violated the copyright which is automatically associated with the text from the moment the text is published. It could be that I do not have a problem with this yet the person who wishes to copy and use this text beyond the provisions of 'fair use' cannot know this and if no name is associated with the text it is not prudent for someone else to simply take it and use it for fear of possible violation.

Secondly, 'public domain' is a product of american legal system (I assume that it comes from brittish 'common law'). In most other legal sytems in the world there is no equivalent to 'public domain' hence something belonging to the 'public domain' does not afford it any kind of international legal protection. This is where so many people who oppose Free Software licenses wishing to release their code to the 'public domain'. They simply fail to grasp the legal reality- sure go ahead and state somewhere in your source code that the code is public domain-now wait till someone downloads this code in Germany where the concept of 'public domain' does not exist...

Commercialism is primarily a function of exlcusionary rights('my right' to something is defined and enforced by delimiting and excluding the rights of others to the thing in question.) If I exclusively hold the rights to something I can dictate the terms of it's usage and who may use it. The 'public domain' is not anti-commercial as much as it is orthogonal to issues of commercialism. 'Public Domain' means that no exclusive rightholder exists for a given work-the lack of an exclusive rightholder means that in a market all members of the market have equal(same) access and rights(is there such a thing as a non-exclusionary right?) to the work in question.
But what Dvorak really seems to miss is how the Creative Commons is a reaction against the perversion of fundamental assumptions reguarding accessibility which has taken place in the past 15 years in light of the so-called 'information age'.

In

Re:Dvorak competence

[llauren]

Heck, he even designed a keyboard with all the keys in the wrong places :)

You need to learn your history.

[Some Random Username]

Saying "the source code is open" most certainly had meaning before the "open source movement" began. Just because a couple people decided they wanted to "own" a vague concept like a "movement", doesn't mean everything they say is the gospel truth. People said "open source" before the OSI existed, and their determination to claim they own or represent a diverse group of people with little to nothing in common is absurd and insulting.

Open source software existed before OSI did, its been around since the 70s. And the FSF wants to redefine lots of words to mean what they want instead of what it actually means (free and freedom for instance), pointing that out does not help your case any, it just shows that certain groups will do anything they can to try to further their agendas.

RMS worship makes me gag

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will read this, but I feel like typing it. As a bit of a Mac-nut, I get lumped in with a group that are often accused of idolizing Steve Jobs. And yeah, we are often in awe of the guy and his achievements and are pre-disposed to think anything he does is a good idea.

But man! The idolization of Steve Jobs by Mac zealots is utterly dwarfed by the worship of RMS by the "Free" software zealots. They speak of him in reverence usually reserved for the likes of Jesus Christ. Simply the fact that RMS holds an opinion is enough to make that opinion Gospel Truth. RMS is Perfect. RMS Knows All. His words are truth, His cause just, and His shit tastes like crunchy peanut butter.

Christ! Even Mac zealots will admit that Steve Jobs, while a genius, is also an asshole. But RMS? He's the fucking messiah.

No one, I repeat, NO ONE is worthy of that kind of idulation, regardless of his achievements. And it's the single biggest reason why I have to believe the FSF is full of crap.

Dvorak is the flame master

[gnunzo]

He is popular simply because of his constant flaming. Like the rest of our media, if it is not instantly controversial, people ignore it.

Like spam, it's too bad people respond to his mindless dribble.

Evidence?

[jbn-o]

You keep making these claims, but you present no evidence to support them.

I see no absurdity or insult behind the corporations who seek to gain the imprimateur of the Open Source Initiative. Finally, free and freedom aren't being redefined. They're being used properly. It's vague to talk about freedom without specifying what freedoms one is talking about, and that's what the FSF does.

Re:Evidence?

[Nimrangul]

The Free Software Foundation trys to dictate what freedom is, what would you call that other than trying to redefine the word?

Last I checked, the Free Software Foundation wanted to take away my freedom to do whatever I want with my code, so everyone can have their definition of freedom .

I see the stupidity of a organization deciding to try and dictate what is and isn't open source. Open source is having access to the code, that is all, not even the ability to use that code is implied with the term open source. Yet the Open Source Inititive tries to tell everyone what isn't open source, something that came along well before they did and is broader than they define it.

Perhaps because I see that stupidity, I can see the stupidity of companies trying to gain the Open Source Inititive's favour. That's like an organisation forming to dictate what is and isn't a liquid, people applying their drinks to be certified as liquids and the group only approving a select set of liquids. It's nonsense.

Re:Evidence?

[Some Random Username]

Evidence to support what claims? That the OSI happened after open source did? Ask them, they didn't come about until the late 90's, do you seriously believe the previous 20 some years of open source software was imaginary?

As for free and freedom being redefined, the FSF and captain nutbar try to claim that "freedom" and "GPL licensed" are the same. This is clearly not the case, as the GPL dictates a set of restrictions that apply to the code. Freedom would be public domain. Trying to push the word free to match their new restricted idea of free is obviously pushing an agenda.

Get a clue?

[asqui]

This guy sounds like a bit of a fool.

I hope he's not the same Dvorak that invented the keyboard layout I'm using.