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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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 /.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.