Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Blogging About Blogging XLIV
Goofy-looking Tech Central Station contributor Arnold Kling boldly proposes that "content is crap" and that the Creative Commons Licensing Project is insignificant. If it's so insignificant, what attracted Colonel Kling's ire?

He thinks that the Creative Commons is based on some hippy-dippy ideology that holds that content aggregators, publishers, and media companies are evil and that pure content is golden. I don't think it's based on that at all. I think it's a complement to copyright that can help protect the ownership and integrity of smaller media makers of all stripes. It helps people say that their work can be reused -- and helps them indicate how.

But Kling wouldn't understand that. His work is for hire. The article he wrote is copyright 2003 Tech Central Station. He has no say how it's reused. He sees no future income from his work beyond his salary of freelance wage. And if push came to shove, he might not be able to legally photocopy a printout of his own story at Kinko's.

Huh.

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