Recently in Copyright Category

Over at Americablog, one of the posters is cracking snide about Comedy Central "censoring" people posting clips of their shows. Look, I love the YouTubes as much as the next spineless, yellow liberal -- but for the love of all that is secular progressive stop conflating legitimate copyright enforcement with censorship. you look like a frigtard when you do that. Copyright is important. Yes, it gets abused. No, Comedy Central is not abusing copyright here. No, it's not censorship. Get over yourself. You're just a blogger on the interweb. You aren't a dude in China standing in front of a tank.

I recently got a FlickrMail from a random person, who lives in The Netherlands, letting me know that he had used one of my photos on Flickr for his latest netlabel release cover. Now, while it's not like I just did the cover the next Pixies CD, I still think it's pretty cool. As icing on the cake, the music is pretty cool too.

But let's take a peek at a few points with regard to copyright. That photo is licensed with by-nc, which means that when using the work, credit for the original work goes to me (which they link back to my flickr account, which is perfect) and they can't sell the work for profit, which they aren't. All of that was possible because of the license. I gave away certain right, with strict conditions, and it was all done with out any communication until it was all over and released. This is exactly why I wanted my photos licensed like this. I still reserve the right to be the only one to make money off that photo. I still reserve the right to have my name associated with the work. For me it comes does to this, if you aren't making money off my work I really don't give a damn as long as you tell people it was my work.

Case closed. Next!

[Note: I was webmaster for EFF when Creative Commons launched and Lawrence Lessig is on the board of EFF...so yeah, I'm biased towards Creative Commons]

John Dvorak makes his living by writing columns that attempt to stir up the pot to get more traffic to PC Magazine's ad-laden website. His current column, to which I will not link for fear that you will hold me responsible for descreasing your IQ just by reading it, is a classic example of his "style."

Creative Commons is his target. It's taken John almost three years to come to the opinion that it's "eye-rolling dumb."

Wow.

He even went so far as to ask "the critics", and by "critics" we mean Andrew Orlowski (who is himself the John Dvorak of The Register), about how lame CC was. Amazingly enough, Andrew did think CC wasn't that great. Again, wow.

The rest of the article is just as inane and full of misrepresentations of not only CC but Copyright law itself. You would think somebody who makes money off their own copyrighted work would understand a bit more about the system. Apparently not.

He closes with, "Will this nonsense ever end?" John, I ask myself that very question every single time I hear about one of your articles.

"Some rights reserved" versus "All right reserved." It's really not that difficult. Seriously. Even I can understand it.

Related Links:

• About Creative Commons
• Fair Use
• Learn More about Creative Commons

Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy. So when he says stupid shit, I suspect that he knows it and is lying through his teeth.

There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

Who in the hell is he talking about? It can't be the FSF because the GPL is founded on copyright. It can't be EFF, they've always said that copyright was to create an incentive, for limited times of course. It can't be Creative Commons. Is he just talking about the "No Software Patents" people (Yes, I understand that this includes EFF and FSF, but they are very specific areas and in no way does that position call for an end to all patents or protection of ideas)? Are there protesters outside his office with big "NO COPYRIGHT EVER!" signs?

Just what the world needs...more scare tactics. But then what else would one expect from a founder of Microsoft?

I have been working on a retort to "What About The Artist, Stupid?" since I first read it via diepunyhumans. Most importantly before we start, I do not speak for EFF in any way. I no longer work for EFF. These thoughts, opinions and statements are my own.

I made sure my EFF buddies heard about it and Ren gave a nice reply. Mr Ellis has already left a lengthy and thoughtful reply. I'm still working on mine. It's not a "You spoke ill of EFF now you die" reply either. Mr Ellis makes a number of good points about creative control, making money, and how the system is broken. But one thing that I think should be addressed is that P2P is a tree in the forest and we don't want to loose site of the big picture.

EFF is fighting "for" P2P because they understand that when you make general-use technology illegal you are going down the wrong road. EFF is not fighting "against" artists or "against" copyright. Those are ludicrous positions to attribute to EFF. EFF has never said they have a "perfect plan" to solve the problems surrounding the music industry. They have offered up a number of ideas, all which have real world flaws.

It's perfectly reasonable for Mr Ellis to worry about his own direct interests before anyone else. He would be unwise not to do so. But Mr Ellis cannot expect EFF to put his interests at the front of the efforts either.

Man, the Moore Country, North Carolina 6th grade technology curriculum (.doc) is pretty tough!

Kick ass!