Andrew Orlowski is one of my favourite techno-political commentators. Yes, I have favourite techno-political commentators.

He rights for The Register, easily my favourite techno-journalism outfit. Wired doesn’t count, it’s more an ideas thing. Certainly their techno-gear coverage sucks, anway.

Orlowski has just written an article, Doonesbury savages Pepperland’s copyright utopians, in which he knocks Creative Commons as a self important campaign which doesn’t address the realities of the non-US, where morality is more important than legality. I thought it was kind of a silly article (it didn’t have much to do with the cartoon, anyway), and since he was soliciting responses, you bet I told him so.

Here’s what I had to say. Tremble, Andrew Orlowski:

Andrew,

I don’t often respond to trolls, but okay, I’ll bite.

There no doubt are Thudpuckers out there, claiming that Creative Commons and other non-mainstream ideas about copyright are going to save music or at least humanity, but I think you’ll find they’re a small fraction of the people using creative commons licenses for their work. Creative Commons is a specific solution to a specific problem. Using their licenses is a humdrum undertaking, albeit a useful one. Utopianism indeed.

The idea that the existence of Creative Commons licenses – and their use by people who want to use them – will somehow loosen the rights of people who don’t use them is just silly. That applies to moral or legal rights as you choose.

Plenty of people do use the licenses you know. That sounds like success to me. Suggesting that Creative Commons “hasn’t gone anywhere” is only really supportable if you assign the “campaign” world dominating intentions that I just don’t think it has.

There is such a campaign of course. One which, last I checked, you were a part of. Sorry.

You may not use this email in party political broadcasts. You may use things I have written under CC licenses in party political broadcasts. Your rights in either case, and my rights in either case, are unaffected by whether Creative Commons has a receptionist.

Regards,

Hugh