Kudos to Creative Commons for holding monthly salons for artists and other creators in San Francisco and encouraging similar activities elsewhere. The idea isn’t to ballyhoo CC directly but rather share tips on how and why the artists are using CC-licensed content.
“You know, you guys were fantastic in demonstrating what you’ve done with your stuff,” CC founder Larry Lessig told Geek Entertainment Television, thereby inspiring GETV to caption the video: “No need to kiss ass, Larry, we already love you.”
I also enjoyed a typical Lessig poke at the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which, among many other outrages, has kept many a movie out of today’s public domain and hence out of the hands of archivists who otherwise would lovingly preserve them before the films disintegrated. Same idea applies to orphaned novels. Go too long, and future generations won’t even bother to find out what they missed. Even without Bono, literature is in enough trouble.
And speaking of copyright, especially the Bono Act: Does anyone in Chapel Hill care about copyright close to home? Why is UNC poverty center director John Edwards, who served on a copyright-related Senate committee, continuing to get away with his silence on the Bono Act and other job-hostile copyright laws? Yep, the Edwards, who most likely will run again for president in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
I remain particularly disappointed with the usually outspoken Paul Jones and the rest of the gang at iBiblio, site of the main servers housing Project Gutenberg. They should at least blog polite suggestions to Edwards to speak out.
UNC may lose in basketball, but perhaps my fellow Tar Heels can show a little character when it comes to the defense of the public domain. This kinda reminds me of the ALA whimping out on the pesky issue of Castro’s treatment of uncredentialed but freedom-minded librarians. Sometimes “professionalism,” mingled with careerism, can be the enemy of principle and commonsense.
Related: Cato report on the DMCA vs. innovation (via Copyfight). As a lifelong liberal Dem, I’m pleased to see these issues transcend partisan and ideological lines. Why can’t John Edwards catch up with Cato? I don’t mind his Hollywood donations–I do mind his silence on Bono and the more repugnant elements of the DMCA.
