Daily Archives: July 20, 2005

bq.Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford? Dubbed Creative Commons, this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous “fair use” provisos of existing copyright law. This is 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. – John Dvorak I generally enjoy reading John Dvorak’s column because even though rarely, if ever, his many outlandish predictions come true. But this column is definitely not one of his best. Creative Commons is about giving rights away, not creating new ones. His argument over court enforcement simply did not jibe with the facts. And to publicly admit that you consult Andrew Orlowski on anything makes the argument to me that you don’t have a point to make at all. And he doesn’t seem to get that Creative Commons content can often by free for commercial use. Aside: I checked to see what Lawrence Lessig thought of the column. Unfortunately, he is on vacation and his blog is being updated by Cass Sunnstein, someone I hold in even lower regard than Orlowski for his miserable pro-censorship Republic.com. I doubt Sunnstein will even find out about the column.