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RMS says Creative Commons Unacceptable
Mr A Coward writes "Richard Stallman has stated in an interview that he no longer supports Creative Commons licenses. In the interview carried on LinuxP2P.com, and which is largely about the P2P and DRM issues, Stallman ends by saying: 'I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable.' He suggests instead using the GPL for creative works." The crux of his argument is that, since he disagrees with some of the CC licenses, and people tend to lump them all together, he feels compelled to reject them all. What's your take? Are some Creative Commons licenses worth using, even if others aren't?
RMS: People have a right to share copies of published works; P2P programs are simply a means to do it more usefully, and that is a good thing.
If we are going to mince words maybe we should start with an honest appraisal of the difference between sharing (as in borrowing a book) and copying. All of us who make a living being creative understand the shortcomings of current copyright legislation and know that we need people to think about creative work in new ways if we are going to take IP law into the 21st century; we know tilting in favor of multi-national corporations at the expense of individuals is a mistake, but we are not going to get anywhere with the type of lazy thinking which asserts things like, "If copyright law forbids people from sharing, copyright law is wrong." I'll take Lawrence Lessig's ideas over Mr. Stallman's any day.
If it's true (as RMS says in the interview) that the various Creative Commons licenses are "more different than similar", and if they differ on issues you care about, then yes, I would have to agree with Stallman that they need to be discussed separately, that you can't make a blanket statement saying either "I support CC licenses" or "I reject CC licenses". If some Creative Commons licenses are worth using and others aren't, it would be best to stop talking about them collectively as "Creative Commons licenses" and instead discuss them under their own names.
Call it the GNU\Creative Commons License. Problem solved.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"As for the music factories--a.k.a. the major record companies--what they want is power. They will never accept P2P sharing as long as it remains a way to escape from their power. For their abuses against the people, they deserve to be abolished, and that should be everyone's goal. "
Hee-hee, he's so cute when he's going all nazi. Don't use the words "producers," "content," or "intellectual property." MP3s are evil. CDs with DRM aren't really CDs, they're "fake CDs" and they're "the face of the enemy." I swear, if he doesn't stop gritting his teeth at the universe he's gonna wear them down to the nub...
I think it's time we just start ignoring RMS. Once the national media noticed him about 5-6 years ago, his ego has tipped the scales. He's so far off the deep end that I for one don't want to be associated with his ideas.
It's like we're all saying "Open source is a good thing", and he's now picking up that banner, saying "Unless it's completely open and completely free in every possible sense of the word, it's wrong". That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying "Open source is a good thing".
sig?
IMHO, if you're going to have some sort of umbrella for licenses to be put under, it should mean something. Near as I can tell, Creative Commons has no real criteria for deciding whether or not a license is acceptable.
If I read that a license is OSI approved, I know exactly what that means, and what sorts of things I can expect to be able to do and what I can expect to not be able to do.
If I hear that a license is a creative commons license, it tells me nothing. For all I know, it might be "You're allowed to distribute this only if you feel strongly that you have green skin.". They have license that discriminate based on what country you're a citizen of, so I don't see why they won't pick other weird things in the future.
If they want to be taken seriously, they will publish clear criteria for the acceptability of a license.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
In other news, water is still wet, Microsoft is still a monopoly, and people dislike paying taxes.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I stopped listening to him sometime around the GNU/Linux debacle. He doesn't really provide much value to anyone who doesn't want to be hard left.
Don't get me wrong, the man did some great things in bringing forth the Free Software movement, but now it seems like his goal is to destroy everything that doesn't fit his ideals, and that's just as dangerous as what he opposes.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
He suggests instead using the GPL for creative works.
You mean he's pushing his own ideas as better then someone elses? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Several years ago, I heard Stallman speak at a lecture at my university. He was clearly very smart, and very driven by ideological goals. On top of all that, there was also a hint of that indefinable quality shared by most crazy people. Something about him was not quite right--I got a sense that his grasp on reality was slipping a bit. Maybe this is necessary for a person to make the kind of sacrifices he has, but it's a dangerous balance.
From reading the recent draft of the GPL v3, and the article attached to this story, I get a sense that he's slipped further. For instance, when he spoke at my university, he recognized that the best way to achieve your goals is to have limited, realistic goals, and focus on those. When people asked him about copyright on music or movies, he diplomatically dodged the question and said it was a separate issue from his Free Software philosophy, and he didn't want to address it. In the interview linked in TFA, he outright attacks copyright for these things. The GPL v3's attack on DRM is similar. Stallman has sacrificed the clarity and readibility of the GPL v2 in order to attack patents and DRM.
Now, maybe you agree with Stallman about copyright for music, etc. Even so, you should recognize that that puts you farther outside the mainstream, and it's much harder to change the mainstream when you're 1,000 miles away. If a bunch of Americans write letters to Congress demanding that copyright be abolished*, they will be ignored. If they ask that copyright law take a step back towards the original constitutional idea of limited (in time and power) protection to promote progress in science and the useful arts, that may actually get somewhere. It is vitally important that we sound reasonable.
Stallman has lost his sense of perspective and his grasp on reality. I think it's possible that he is now harmful to the Free Software movement, and the community needs to think about how to deal with this problem. If the community asked him to step down, would he?
* I know Stallman didn't outright call for the abolition of copyright. Still, the changes he wants (the freedom for anyone to distribute any published work) amount to nearly the same thing.
If ever there was a case of
"the perfect being the enemy of the good"
He embodies it.
Someone forgot to give Stallman his medication this week. Who's turn is it?
What Stallman is saying sounds, as usual, intellectually consistent. Because some licenses that are called Creative Commons licenses include restrictions that Stallman does not support, Stallman will not endorse the Creative Commons brand. In other words, he will not automatically give you a pat on the back just because you use a Creative Commons license; he wants to know what the terms of the license are first.
Sounds fine to me. I've never been a big supporter of Creative Commons for much the same reason. All Creative Commons seems to be, to me, is a collection of license that someone has paid a lawyer to draft up and then donated that work to the public. You can pick and choose between the licenses and their clauses. It's a generous donation and it's very handy.
Then again, I've never seen how Creative Commons amounts to the "social movement" that people make it out to be. Stallman, whether you agree with him or not, seems devoutly intent on shaking up the foundations of the modern concept of intellectual property. By comparison, Creative Commons licenses seem like little more than tools for helping people navigate the status quo.
Breakfast served all day!
Are some Creative Commons licenses worth using, even if others aren't?
Absolutely! The organization as a whole is trying to better society. I read many of Lawrence Lessig's articles and agree with just about everything he says. His goal is to provide options. A full range of options. Pick the ones that suit your needs and ignore the rest.
After all, isn't that what we do with our Linux systems? We pick the distro and packages we want and ignore the rest. If you don't like OpenOffice it doesn't mean you shouldn't use Linux! Just don't use the parts you don't like!
Developers: We can use your help.
I can't help but wonder if people would take Stallman a bit more seriously if he shaved and got a haircut. His appearance might then sufficiently approach the norm to prevent the immediate impression most people would receive upon seeing him: namely that he's an overaged hippie out of his time, out of his place, and out of his mind.
If I write something, I get to pick the license. If Stallman doesn't like it, I'll sleep just fine at night and will have no problems looking at myself in the mirror.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Stallman is the Pat Robertson of the open source movement. Millions of reasonable people, shouted down in the public by a loud-mouthed, wild-eyed zealot who has gone off the deep end and provides fodders for their enemies. Like Robertson, he lives off his glory days accomplishments, while continuing to have an eery sway over many of the new generation who are in fact much better than him. Thank you for writing Emacs, GCC, etc., but the new generation has come along and really moved that work forward and then some, and let's not forget the fact that Apache, Mozilla and others exist independently of his work.
Thank you for your contributions, but you're not relevant anymore to the degree you aspire to be. IMO, the real voice of reason on this issue is Linus Torvalds with his "we are not crusaders" mentality that is more libertarian than left-liberal.
I read the draft and found a section that would prevent busybox from using GPLv3. (It's the second coming of the BSD advertising clause: each busybox binary would have to contain GPL boilerplate text in the binary itself, and we're trying for small binary size on embedded systems. In GPL2, the advertising clause was optional. In GPL3 it isn't. That's a fatal flaw for us.)
I tried to comment through their web page, but it doesn't work with Konqueror. I sent a comment via their email system, but it was bounced by their robot. (The subject text, "Concerns about gpl3 and busybox", doesn't appear in the GPL draft document, this has not been seen by a human nor will it ever be. Try jumping through the hoop again.)
It was about this time I decided I really don't care enough about placating Stallman. Sticking with v2 is just fine with me, and his opinion about creative commons is irrelevant as well. At this point, I consider Stallman irrelevant, and GPLv3 just another incompatible license fragmenting the open source userbase.
A pity, really...
There are many times when "Screw you guys, I'm going home" is a valid response, but Stallman has done it so many times, about so many Open Source projects that don't adhere to Pope Stallman's ex cathedra Encyclical on The True and Only GPL that it's lost all meaning. Yeah, RMS, we've figured out nothing that you haven't personally blessed is pure and holy enough for you. Next question.
Perhaps his most impressive feat is making Eric Raymond look reasonable by comparison...
Crow T. Trollbot
I like the GPL and use it for software, but it's just not right for things like text. For instance, I can use my GPL-given right to revise and extend Richard Stallman's text to read:
.)
I love the Creative Commons. I think the Creative Commons is great as a whole, because some of its licenses are not unacceptable. In fact, I want Larry Lessig to have my baby. Wait that's not feasible.
(Changes in bold
What's right for software is not right for matters of opinion or fact. The distinction between sources and binaries don't matter here and actually confuse the right decisions. Nor is there any reason to believe that someone would get anything out of the ability to revise and extend anyone else's words. Okay, it might make sense for a collaborative manual, but I think there are many cases where the right leads to the trouble we're seeing with the clever editors of the Wikipedia.
Given that CC tries to create analogous licenses for non-software to those that already exist for software (sharealike == GPL, attribution required == BSD) I would say RMS is entitled to his opinion but I respectfully disagree. We know RMS disapproves of the BSD license and prefers the GPL, on account of maintaining the freedom of the software - fine, his opinion given freely. He doesn't seem to explicitly say so, but does he disapprove of the CC attribution license? His problem seems to be one of terms and definitions - not all CC licenses are free it's true, but this sounds more like a small marketing problem for the folks behind CC, rather like the perennial "open source" v. "free software" debate (neither term truly captures the meaning of GPL-like licenses). He does note that the GPL is unsuited, in his opinion, to a book or printed work and I'm struggling to see how it can be applied to other artistic works: do any other class of works (baking recipes being the only example I can think of right now, or maybe the exact colour combinations and brush techniques used in a painting?) have the distinction between human-readable/machine unreadable and human unreadable/machine readable representations of the same work? The GPL is all about ensuring software stays human readable, which is fine, but this isn't the problem with other types of creative work - the problem there is how to legally maintain one's right to a monopoly on the distribution of the work as a whole whilst also allowing others to use substantial portions to build their own works. Let people choose the license they want, is my opinion.
Funny I was just discussing this with a coworker today.
I agree completely with RMS. The Creative Commons licenses are not something that should be lumped together.
They also have several legal problems. Because there are 10 different possibilities for CC license combinations, it's difficult to determine whether all 10 are enforcable or not. The process for vetting even one license is hard enough, much less 10 distinct licenses.
The other is the "no commercial use" licenses. I think these would work fine for a work where the ownership is tightly controlled, but for a collaborative work where no one can authorize license changes, it raises an enforcability question.
If you were to sue someone for infringement, you'd generally sue them for the monetary damages caused by their misuse of your work. If it's impossible for anyone to commercially exploit the work, there's no way there could be any damages. You therefore really have nothing to sue for, and no way to enforce.
For tightly held works, you can claim that you have the ability to license the work under another license if you desire, and therefore there is a commercial potential, and a potential for monetary damages. For works with tainted ownership (say 100 contributers, some dead, many with no contact information), it would be hard to argue that anyone anywhere could ever commercially exploit the project, and there's no basis for claiming damages.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Since I dont agree with every opinion of RMS, while i do agree with some of them, I have decided that I can no longer endorse RMS. People tend to lump many of his opinions together, some of which are unacceptable, I can't respect any of his opinions anymore.
Seriously this is crap this guy has gone a bit over the top on many things and doesnt seem to have any idea of balance. I think many things about CC is great and it has already help a lot of interesting works to be produced that otherwise could not have been legally allowed.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
I agree with him on so many points, but goddamn it, every time he opens his mouth I have this overwhelming urge to go buy a rootkit CD.
This too, will end.
Reading the article and seeing the responses to the questions was very much like listening to the senate hearings. Ie, very clear answers when the question is aligned with the agenda or beliefs of the person being interviewed/questioned, but very bluntly vague when not in line.
What gets me is that RMS notes that people, in general, lump all of the CC licenses as one entity. He notes that they need to be addressed seperately.
Having said that, RMS is lucid in his responses. I think what gets peoples' goats about RMS is that he is basically unwavering and uncompromising when it comes to his ideals. This has and always will be the case.
My only wish from the article would have been RMS clarifying what portions of the CC Licensing system he considers to be acceptable and what parts he doesn't. Wholesale dismissal of the CC licenses is like getting a paper back with a big fat "F/0" and a note at the bottom saying "Do better next time", without any indication on the paper of what was wrong. (Bad experience with some college professors.
Why gets me is why people keep feeling surprised or shocked when RMS restates his ideals and views: free as in freedom, complete freedom, no restrictions. Yes, it's a hard left. Yes, it's idealistic. Yes, it would cripple companies and businesses that depend on the restriction of information-based goods(music, movies,etc).
But he does have a point. 100 years from now, how will we access DRM'd content that should have gone public domain? How will we read ebooks that can't be readliy converted to other formats? Same with encrypted and locked music, movies, etc?
Personally, he sounds alot like a cross between a hippie, priest, and lawyer, no offense meant to the hippie, priest, or lawyer. But just because he sounds like that, doesn't mean he isn't onto something. It's just not very palatable.
Winged Power Photography
If it were anyone else they could be safely ignored, but RMS brought us the GPL, and it was through his uncomprimising commitment to his vision that we have the movement of Open Source today. Yes people - Open Source, he is one of the fathers of Open Source even if he has disowned his own child. The point is that the man is uncomprimising to the point of being irrational.
But is he - in this instance - being irrational? Well, the creative commons typically used by Flickr, is simply a means of easily defining the rights you are providing. It can mean a number of things, and I think he has a point - that its confusing; you have to read the rights for every bit of work, rather than being able to trust that a creative commons mark means you have certain rights.
I still wouldn't use the GPL for writing or music because the GPL has clauses specifically aimed at software. There is no "source code" for music, and no obligation to distribute the score of the music along with the audio recordings for example. However, the creative commons is a diluted concept if you don't gauranttee certain rights to people, and they have to dig to see what their rights actually are.
Stallmans problem isn't one of intellect as such, but rather poor communication. He communicates in a uncomprimising and arrogant way; his way or the highway; and is unwilling to be part of a bigger team that he has no direct control over. That is why Open Source came about - we escaped the limits of Stallmans retoric.
Stallman still doesn't get Open Source I think - The Hurd being an example more of Cathedral style than Bazzar style development. Open Source has overtaken him for a reason, and that reason is a positive feedback cycle generated by a community of willing participants.
The big difference between open source and free software is the uncomprimising ideological dogma of Stallman. Free Software was about the Stallmans dictatorship; his word was law in that universe. Open Source on the other hand starts with the principles of Free Software, but does not insist the developers have the same ideological passions as Stallman.
That said, Open Source has not diluted the principle (as the Creative Commoms may have) by retaining a clear statement about what is and is not Open Source.
Now maybe in a reality-free zone where everybody works for the common good and nobody takes more than his* fair share, that would be a reasonable thing to pass off as a fact. But Stallman's "facts" are impractial in the real world.
Human beings have produced great art, science, and engineering for millennia in the absence of copyright protection. The assertion that copyrights and patents have any social or economic merit at all is at best unproven.
So, the ideologues trying to push unproven ideas on the rest of us are people like you, people who make strained arguments that somehow society needs to bear the costs and complexities of IP law.
Go prove your case before you whine about Stallman.
I know what a foaming-at-the-mouth "RMS is the antichrist" troll I used to be here on Slashdot, but I've lately come to realise the error of my ways, for two reasons:-
a) It makes me look like a fool, and
b) There is now absolutely no need for me to do it anyway. With the amount of crazed diatribes he's been releasing lately, he's doing a far better job himself of convincing everyone of what a generally undesirable human being he is than I ever could. His fame for his prior contributions has served as the rope, and over the past 2-3 years he's done an absolutely smashing job of using it to hang himself. He's now on the fast track to complete irrelevance.
How true the mathematical proverb is. Every problem does, indeed, have its own solution.
I used to be an RMS hate-ah until I noticed how he's always been right looking back. I still don't get why people get their panties in a bunch over profiteering. It's one thing to "produce" "content" or make a product or provide a service and sell it for reasonable amounts. It's another to be greedy and overvalue your work. For example, I saw this one guy who did some work in a Windows domain to resolve some naming issues. The company he did the consulting for was charged $250 an hour for his time. But since I know how to do exactly what he did, I'd say he overvalued his work. Reconfiguring users, groups and file sharing permisions in an AD domain is not a rocket scientist. It's drudgery, sure... but it's not worth $250 an hour. At best, maybe $15 an hour. He spent four days working on it and put in four hour days. So he made off with $4000 to do that work and the company paid gladly! In my opinion, they were scammed. They would have been far better off just hiring their own IT guy at $60,000 a year to handle those issues as they occur. Who cares if he spends the rest of his time playing World of Warcraft? Even if he only does the same kind of work the consultant did 15 times in a year (typical for most Windows admins), they would break even. Now THAT's some business sense you can use!
The same thing with music. The crap that the music industry and the RIAA controlled music machine produces might be popular, but that doesn't mean it has value. In truth, the songs you hear vomiting out of your radios and CD players daily might be worth about $.10 a pop. Paying $.50 per track to download is massive profit for the music industry. But they want more! THey can't get enough money! And that's what's wrong. These fuckers need to be taught a lesson. Back in the 80s I used to be able to buy a new record for $7.00. The record would have an average of 10-12 songs on it. That worked out to about $.58 per track which was robbery back then. If I was to release my work for public consumption and charged just $1.00 per album, I guarantee I'd be well within my rights. But if I did it expecting $20 an album, that would be ridiculous. That's what the RIAA controlled music machine is doing. STOP THEM NOW!!!
So in conclusion I have to say the problem is when people believe they are entitled to more money than they deserve for their work. Oh and another thing... it's all the fault of the middle man. Analyze every facet of our society and look for the middle man. You'll notice something. He doesn't actually do anything useful but typically gets paid a lot more than the people who do the real work. Think about the CEO who was just a venture capitalist and put some money into a project to bring it to fruition. Yes, he took a risk and maybe the product worked out. Yes, he deserves something in return. However, these guys usualy go nuts and keep 90% of the money for themselves then give the actual inventor/creator a pittance. If Linus Torvalds had turned to VCs for getting Linux out there, you can bet it never would have worked out as it did now. There's be some bloated fat idiot talking about the profits of his company and their bold venture into the Unix-like OS business. Linus would either be dead or fired or making the wage of a janitor somewhere in that company.
So in conclusion let me say that this all proves that there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole of humanity and I call for a complete code audit of the species' DNA. Somewhere along the line something wrong got injected and it resulted in the fucked up world we have now where money is king and the poor are shit upon. Destroy all capitalist dogs!!!! Down with commies!!! Eliminate the anarchists!!! Deneuter the Dadaist!!!! Spay the white supremacists!!!!, Trepan the Moonies!!!! and overall... don't forget the sperm whale!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The Creative Commons never wanted to be a free umbrella. Their goal is to create a standard for licenses. Artistic work used to have a big number of hard to understand licenses, so the CC people created a small set of them that is suitable to almost everybody, and made it available.
So RMS hit it exactly on the head. When you read that something is published on a CC license, you know nothing about your rights. But after you read the license name, you know exactly what it says (so all of you who put works under CC, please tell me the license name). That said, CC was very sucessfull on that, because its licenses cover almost all needs, from the most free work to the most resticted one. But FSF can not recomend you to use CC licenses on general, because, on general, they aren't free.
As usual, people bashing RMS don't know what they are talking about. As the interviewer: "There must be some basic misunderstanding here. If a work is released under the GPL, then the GPL's terms apply to it. How could it possibly be otherwise?". Great answer :).
Rethinking email
Yea, and if you think about it, the only reason why he is like that is that Xerox refused to give the poor guy the sources for the driver of their laser printer when he wanted to fix a bug.
If Microsoft had known what would happen as a result, they might have acquired Xerox and given give him the source code, and RMS would have gone back to his cubicle.
Then we wouldn't be asked to spell Linux with a capital 'G' today... ;-)
RMS's position is harmful to his cause, maybe for the first time in his history of Free Software advocacy.
;-)
/all/ software (or at least all software most people ever want or need) Free (with a capital F), his rigid philosophical stance was needed to counter-act the inevitably creeping process of cooption and re-commercialization by the "Industry". Thus if one accepts that his goals are desireable or at least valid, one can't really say that his rigidity was ever harmful to these goals... at worst it represented an opinion /someone/ needed to hold to maintain progress in the right direction.
/can/ do better.
I haven't even read other comments yet as I'm writing this, but I'm sure that most other commenters would agree with the first part of that sentence, but rather fewer with the second.
Everybody knows that RMS's public posititions on Free Software tend to be uncompromising to say the least... and while I personally have often thought a more compromising position might be more productive especially in the short term, for his stated long-term goal of making
However, in this case I believe he is wrong. I order to achieve RMS's goals of ubiquitous Free software, one has to address the underlying economic assumptions made by society. The problem is that the dominant "neoclassical" view of economics is also very rigid and exclusive... it holds that its idealized "Free Market" is the best and only way to conduct economic congress, and Free Softare does not fit. This economic view is held by essentially all those in power or in control of the economic resources in our global civilization, and successfully sold to the mass of humans that compose this civilization.
What needs to happen before Free Software and many other urgently needed economic alternatives can fully succeed is that the noeclassical market's grip on the global economy needs to losen. For this to happen it is important to first show that viable alternatives exist, and can be to the benefit of our civilzation! That the rigid view of the Free Market is wrong and that we
The Creative Commons has done the remarkable job of helping all alternatives to succeed better without much more of a philosophical position than to say "alternatives are needed and exist". This is to the benefit of the whole spectrum of opinion and a detriment only to the dominant exclusivist one which needs to be toppled.
Yes, it does (very slightly) weaken the Free Software Movement's "GPL Brand", which derives some strength from it's position as the opposit extreme of the dominant one by labeling the all alternatives generically (all are "CC license with X provisions"). But this harm is minimal because the CC and the FSF operate in on different types of information, and aside from occasionally saying "just use the GPL", RMS has not really made any effort to address the clearly at least somewhat different needs of non-software media. In any case, any dilution of the FSF's position would come fairly and as part of a democratizing process.
So, surely RMS must admit that the overall benefit of the CC's well executed efforts massively outweighs any harm it does to his own cause.
: Jürgen Botz
And here's a counter.
Mr. Stallman has been ranting for 25 years. A long time. Pushing the GNU message.
He has predicted doom and gloom for 25 years.
The sorry and sad part? Even though the GNU GPL 2 has been widely accepted, the "doom and gloom" has come to pass. As predicted. DMCA, Copyright Extensions, DRM.
25 years of Stallman activism -- can you use a new XBOX for anything interesting? 25 years of Stallman activism -- you can be brought up on charges for taking apart a toner cartridge. 25 years of Stallman activism -- are component HD actually useful for HD?
Maybe Stallman hasn't been strident enough?
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
In a way, history is repeating itself.
During the 1850's there were all these groups that wanted to work out a friendly solution so that the slave states could get along with the free states. Rules to be nicer to slaves, shorter slave terms, more clearly defined boundaries, and so on and so on. Well they didn't get it, it was an all or nothing game. The very nature of the beast was coercive and restrictive in a way that could not survive the industrial revolution.
Well today, there are people who want a "compromise" with the copyright system. A shorter term here, a nicer enforcement there, more controll to the original author here, and so on and so on. What these people don't understand that the very nature of beast centers arround coercing how people can use and manipulate information at their disposal - the anti thesis of the information age. The only kind of copyright that can survive the information age, is one that can not be enforced.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
Has there actually been cases of brands being stolen in this way? Everyone seems to talk about it as though it were inevitable, but it seems plausible that even if copyright laws allowed a rival company to steal it's franchise, actual fans would always prefer the original makers, and view the copy as an entirely separate work. While they can steal ideas, they can't steal people. A rival company may try to do the Simpsons without Groening, but it will flop, over and over.
I posit that such a nightmare scenario is entirely illusionary, especially for franchises that are worth protecting.
RMS needs to get his head out of software. Way back at the beginning of the Free Software movement, he said that his idea should be applied to software only, and not to other copyrightable materials. Now it appears that he has changed his mind and wants people to use a software-specific license on non-software products.
CC licenses are not meant for software.
A novel that is released under a CC NonCommercial or NonDeriv license might not meet the definition of Free Software, but who the fsck cares? It ain't *software*! Ditto for videos, music, websites, etc. Hell, not even his own GFDL documentatoin meets the Free Software definition!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Then again, I've never seen how Creative Commons amounts to the "social movement" that people make it out to be.
The fact that you've heard of CC at all shows that it's having some effect as a movement.
What the CC movement is ultimately about is showing people that there's more to protecting your work than simply slapping a big © symbol on it. What if you demand attribution, but don't care about duplication? Copyright is not a binary thing. CC firstly educates that there are different options for different uses. It shows that if people start using CC, there's much more usable content out there for people to share and build on. And by creating and sharing the licences and making them easy to apply, it removes the largest stumbling block in the way of people who want to share their stuff while still exerting some control.
Creating the licences is pointless if nobody uses them. You have to get out there and show people how and why. CC's rapidly accelerating acceptance is evidence that they're doing a decent job of it.
You're wrong. He did write the original versions of gcc and gdb, and Emacs among many other things. The original Emacs was ground breaking, not trivial as you allege. Whatever else you may think of him, RMS's code contributions are huge.
His biography is pretty good. See also his Wikipedia entry.
and I can't type very well right now. I'll do my best, anyway. The Disney chain boss has left for five minutes, so I may have time to bang out a quick response.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
Nice idea. Let me know when your company goes public. In the mean time, ponder the notion that it takes a long time for human systems to change, and that usually an awful lot of experimentation is required before the solution that history regards as "obvious" manifests itself. While giving everything away seems obvious to you, if you ran a three-person company, or a three-hundred person company, or a three-thousand person company, would you bet the company and the livelihood of your employees on your deeply held conviction?
The Creative Commons approach is anything but clinging to old ways. It's a means of providing more collaboration, more free exchange of culture, and more options. It provides freedom of choice, a way out of the old one-size-fits-all model of traditional copyright. Like the GPL, it does so within the existing copyright regime.
Sure, it's not as black and white an approach as the GPL. It makes it tougher to determine who should be flying X-Wings and who belongs in a TIE Fighter, but it works in the real world. It is showing people that they can control the level of copyright protection of their works. I won't be at all surprised when more and more content businesses see the light and start voluntarily restricting their control over content. In the mean time, all content creators are not malevolent, drool-fanged monsters trying to steal our precious bodily fluids. Sure, the RIAA are scaly reptiles, but most content creators of them are just honest people trying to make a buck, and in my opinion, bashing them over the head with wildly inflated historical analogies doesn't do anything to advance the dialogue.
Slavery? Come on.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is a huge problem I see with the F/OSS "movement" in general. There's so much bullshit quibbling, infighting, and general friction. As it grows, it runs the very real risk of self-destructing under it's own weight, because of big egos, lack of a cohesive vision, and any fundamental agreement on aims & goals.
Has anybody stopped to think that Microsoft, and other proprietary ("Evil! Evil!") software companies out there are laughing all the way to the bank while RMS bitches about obscure licensing terms? Does anybody in F/OSS aside from the people writing the code realize that maybe 5% of the people who actually use the software really care about whether it uses a CC, GPL, LGPL, or whatever license?
F/OSS professes to want to provide the world with a viable alternative to the Microsofts. A noble endeavor to free society from the tyranny and oppression of Non-free software! You're not going to do that with a fucking license. You're going to do that by writing, and distributing, software that's good. Software that works , and works better than any other alternative. Software that presents a compelling vision of computing to the rest of the world. You can only license code after it's written... it's the quality of the code that will determine whether or not anybody wants to copy the code in the first place. Apache anyone? Perl? Python? Ant? There are plenty of other open-source projects out there that are de facto standards over any analogous Microsoft product in that market segment, simply because they're fundamentally better, or they fill a niche that Microsoft didn't think to try and fill.
What RMS is doing is stupid, and counter-productive. Focus on what *you* do, do it well, and release it with a license you agree with. Who cares if Microsoft keeps writing proprietary software, if you're not using it, affected by it, or supporting a style of software development you disagree with? If I want to spend $100 bucks a year buying new versions of Microsoft Money, well, it's my money, isn't it? If you have a free alternative that does the same or better job than MS Money, then tell me about it. Show it to me. But until then, why do you give a flying fornication what I choose to use? This is what I just don't get.
You say you want to provide a choice, and then you pitch a fit when people choose to do something you don't agree with? Hmm... maybe you should have told us it was a rhetorical question, then.