( Via scobeleizer) Mitch Kapor writes, Criticizing Creative Commons for undermining an artist's ability to be paid for work puts the ignorance of the critic on display. Excerpts with edits and my comments added:
Creative Commons,helps solve a different problem than artist compensation, namely how to enable a voluntary, more flexible regime of sharing creative work. Free culture underpins commercial culture, and if the former is eroded by all-or-nothing IP schemes, we are all the poorer.Larry Lessig's book Free Culture explains this idea further.How artists are compensated is itself a significant issue, but let's not confuse that with whether the current business models of the organizations which control the creation and distribution of music, film, and software are sacrosanct. They're not, and outrage is the proper response when business tries to wrap itself in the flag and shout "Commie" in the face of disruptive technology and cultural shifts. That's the thing about the capitalist dynamic of creative destruction. You can find yourself on the winning or losing side of a paradigm shift. Business will go on, but the new winning models are going to be very different from we're used to.
Scobleizer counters," there's a huge difference between developers getting together at a user group or a geek dinner and sharing source code with each other and outright attack on the idea of intellectual property". He adds, "In china, there all movies, all music, and all software are sold on street corners for $1 (and none of that money goes to the people who actually created the work). A developer working for you would not be working for free.I'd rather have a market like the United States has where those who produce intellectual property (software, ideas, movies, music) can expect to get paid for that work than one in China where people who produce those four things can expect to not get a cent for their work because their work is pirated and sold on every street corner for nearly nothing.That said, I put all my photos and my weblog writing into the creative commons. I don't mind at all that Bloglines and other aggregators reprint my work in whole (or in part). There's great benefit to me and everyone by my doing so. But I push back on those who think that all my work should be for free". I see validity in both sides of the argument. Mitch is perhaps more right - Mitch is talking about operating in a defined legal and social network, whereas scobeleizer is talking about things that are illegal - If IP violation happens so rampantly in China,the issue is how the software makers and the US politically , consistent with international norms take it up - this is an extension of how blindfolded and partisan the US govt is when it comes to intenational relationships and to China - Lack of IP violations by china has not been taken up by western nations/manufacturers with the needed focus and thrust - Afterall china needs the world as much as the world needs china - there are several levers in any trade arrangements - that can be leveraged by US and western nations. Lets not confuse this with the "Free Culture" movement .
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