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  • From: "Nick Poole" <nick AT mda.org.uk>
  • To: "'Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts'" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: Stealing ideas?
  • Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 18:34:10 -0000

I'd just like to respond to this latest exchange. To me, the concept of a
Creative Commons operates on (at least) 2 levels:

1. The level at which it raises (admittedly very interesting) questions of
interpretation and implementation for a crowd for whom copyright is of
interest per se

2. The level at which it presents the possibility of an open and creative
means of sharing content for people for whom copyright in itself is of
relatively little interest, but who have a very vested interest in exactly
what they are doing with their content, and what they are enabling other
people to do

I freely admit that I belong to the latter camp. I am comfortable with my
level of understanding of Copyright legislation here in the UK, and even
from this position of relative ignorance, I quite happily disregarded
'Copyright does not protect works, it destroys them' as a bit of an
oversimplification.

I, and lots of others like me, are waiting in the wings to support Creative
Commons as a more open and intuitively sensible mode of sharing material,
and I am pleased that it lets me feel like licensing is working for, rather
than against, my interest in sharing information. However, the longer the
discussion rests on technical interpretation of copyright legislation, the
more time these potential advocates and users are going to have in which to
get frustrated.

Also - a recent post said that 'CC is not a sales tool'. Although I know
this isn't exactly the intended interpretation, I have to disagree. The
adoption of the CC approach, and the conceptual attitude which it manifests,
have a significant impact on what I think about an organisation, and how
likely I am to be willing to deal with it. That sounds like pure marketing
to me!

Yours sincerely,

Nick Poole


-----Original Message-----
From: cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Greg London
Sent: 14 November 2004 18:15
To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts
Subject: Re: Stealing ideas?


Branko Collin said:
>
> On 14 Nov 2004, at 11:37, Greg London wrote:
>> Branko Collin said:
>> > As a Project Gutenberg volunteer and webmaster of a site that deals
>> > with abandoned games, I must strongly object to this reading of
>> > copyright. Copyright does not protect works, it destroys them.
>> > Copyright protects the interests of authors (well, at least in
>> > theory). Works get the raw end of the deal with copyright.
>>
>> Don't be so naive as to believe every bit of anti-copyright propaganda
>> you've ever read. The idea of intellectual property has acquired some
>> severe flaws of late, but the basic concept is sound and can even be
>> fair.
>
> I am sorry, how is stating that which I am experiencing 'propaganda'?
> Are you calling me a liar?

You said:
"Copyright does not protect works, it destroys them."
"Works get the raw end of the deal with copyright."

Whatever you're experiencing, you're NOT conveying it in reality-based
terms. Works don't get "destroyed" by giving authors exclusive rights
to them for a limited time. And it isn't a "raw deal" to give an author
a limited monopoly to sell their works on a market economy.

I'm not calling you a liar.
I'm calling you incendiary.

Your experience is separate from how you EXPRESS it.

And you've expressed your experience in a way that is neither accurate,
nor convincing, and will likely be dismissed by the very people whose
attitudes you need to change. If you simply want to rant and rave
and preach to the choir, fine, go ahead. But if you want to state your
case in such a way that it actually has some sort of effect on things,
then you need to work on your delivery.

Incendiary isn't going to cut it.

And it might even scare away someone who would otherwise have considered
a more open approach to copyright. And at that point, you'll start
screwing up something I'm trying to accomplish, namely putting the
gift-economy approach to copyright on the same level as the market-economy
approach to copyright.

loose language and wild accusations won't help.


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