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["David M. Berry" <d.berry AT sussex.ac.uk>]

Cory

You seem to be saying 'let's have no dissent'. I would argue that we need a rich and critical discussion of all activities that Creative Commons gets itself into otherwise grave mistakes (like the Bzzz public relations fiasco) will be made. A lot of people invest a lot of time and personal work into supporting the Creative Commons, and when it starts to act completely authoritarian (like the Sampler License rename https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-sampling/2004-August/thread.html ) or even plain dumb (like this), then it is important that it gets critical feedback from its supporters as well as its foes. 

Maybe this 'joke' works better over there than over here. I don't know. But Creative Commons' actions I sometimes find plain conservative and reactionary rather than progressive. The dangers with Creative Commons, are their tacit acceptance of copyright (indeed their *need* for it) means that it can be used as an argument to support copyright extension rather than reject it. In other words 'copyright works, just look how CC makes the whole thing run smoother, who needs term limitations when stuff can be licensed anyway'. To read more of our critique see Free Software Magazine: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/current_issues/#issue_05

Anyway, it's hardly a firing squad, and hardly in a circle, as clearly others agree with you and my remarks have generated lots of contrary debate - always a good thing.

;-)

Cheers

David

On 22 Jun 2005, at 10:27, Christian Ahlert wrote:

Is it really 

necessary to arrange this firing squad in a circle?

Cory