Don’t tell me that the AC with the hat made entirely of ass who criticized the wrong post author is now critiquing someone else’s “criticism.”

(May I direct your attention to the quotation marks around “criticism.” We’ll get back to those.)

1. “The guy with the extra chromosome is not who you think he is.

2. RE: ever/evar. I was quoting Scott Burke’s own headline for the benefit of the readers who weren’t interested in clicking through to the source material and experience for themselves the meme-riffing “cleverness” that is Scott’s headline. Quoting someone is not criticism. (Hence the quotation marks above. Also hence the quotation marks around “cleverness,” indicating that it is anything but.)

3. Also this thing, which may enlighten you as to the existence of an “on-purpose” misspelling of “ever.” Try to maintain your focus. It runs about 40-45 words spread over three definitions.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=evar

4. I don’t know how long you’ve been holding onto that particular gem (“wrong list of Senators”), but I hope it’s been at least several weeks. It must have been tough sitting on this powderkeg, waiting for Mike (or whoever you think is “chromosome +”) to slip up just once so you could tear his whole world apart with this one devastating line. And now you’ve wasted it on a know-nothing underling (who you could have insulted simply for being “not Mike” or “not funny”) by hastily drawing the wrong conclusions (presumably in crayon).

Slick.

I appreciate your concern, but I work two (2) day jobs, seven days a week (excluding major holidays — and since neither job is with the post office, I mean only major holidays). I’m not in school. (See also: working seven days a week.)

I don’t get paid for writing. Not here. Not at the other places I’ve been published. And there’s certainly nothing rolling in over at my oft-neglected blog. But I’m still writing. Go figure.

Let’s get to my failures. (I was really tempted to use quotation marks on the last word, but I’ll go ahead and ride it out.)

1.) You’re correct. There is little gained in society for someone else to do exactly the same thing. I never claimed that. If someone remixes a track (even something CC-licensed) and it makes bank, the original doesn’t cease to exist, nor does it logically follow that there is no market for the original.

In your example… well, we can’t really use your example. CC licensing is not permission for someone to take someone’s artwork and sign their name to it. That’s not the intent at all. Even at it’s most liberal (CC-BY), you can share the artwork as long as you attribute it. You can’t just say “I made this” and walk off with the money. So, whatever intrinsic value there is in the original remains with the original.

Let’s use another example: derivative works.

Someone grabs your CC-licensed “Mona Lisa,” draws a mustache on it and sells the hell out of it. The attribution is still there, linking the original back to the creator. Now, an un-mustached “Mona Lisa” may not be as popular as the derivative work, but that’s hardly the fault of the artist doing the “remix.”

Now, your example does work, but has nothing to do with CC licensing. Signed and numbered lithographs from the original artist will be worth more and have a higher value to most people. This is correct. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really refute anything I said. If anything, it confirms it. When I said “art gets used up,” I was drawing a facetious inference from statements made by CC licensing opponents.

2.) There is no competition for free, especially when the free is the only product that you sell. Exactly. And nobody at this site, not even me, is going to tell you differently. But your argument falls off the rails when you start claiming “free” is a business model. It isn’t. It can be part of one, but it can never be the whole thing. There’s nothing in this post that indicates “free” is a business model.

My argument was about letting artists who want to release their work for free should be allowed to, rather than forced, coerced or heavily nudged towards regular old copyright.

As for “free” removing the incentive to create content? It doesn’t. Everyone creating art in a digital medium (music, books, software, movies, etc.) already competes with free whether they want to or not.

These major industries are all competing with piracy and they certainly don’t want to. But they’re still selling their products as well. It may not be as much as they’re used to, but they’re doing it. They have no choice. They think they do, hence all the legislative arm-twisting and courtroom appearances, but all that time, money and effort would be better spent building their business, rather than trying to kill off something that won’t be killed.

You can argue that a race to the bottom in prices and the attendant “free” remove the incentive to create but you won’t get very far. If that were the case (and sunk cost were that much of a factor), no one would be creating and that’s obviously not the case. If you need any proof of that, just read some of the other comments in the thread.

Also, I’ll add in my own personal CASE IN POINT. I work two jobs but I still write in my extremely limited spare time. I don’t know whether I’ll ever make money writing (and I realistically believe I probably won’t), but the 95% surety that I’ll never “monetize” my writing hasn’t stopped me. In fact, I’ve written more in the past two years than I have in my previous 30+.

Even though I think there’s no chance of making a living doing what I love, here’s two things you’ll never see me do:

1.) Stop writing.
2.) Complain about doing it for free.

This writing gig at Techdirt allows me to write for a website I respect and one that I’ve followed for over 4 years. That’s payment enough. The possibility of building from a larger platform than my personal blog is a bonus. The opportunity to interact with people all over the world is the juice.

So, if nothing else, don’t push people out of using a CC license just because it goes against how you believe art should be distributed or “valued.” It’s their artwork. They should be able to give it away or set it on fire or charge $1 million for it if they want to.

And please, various ACs, please don’t encourage me to not give up my day job. I’ve already got plenty of those. If you think I suck, then just say so. It pretty much boils down to the same thing. And as for every post having “some sort of basic failure”? Click on my profile and start building me a list. I’m very curious to see this collection of errors.

Scott –

Thanks for stopping by to give us your viewpoint. I agree with you about the two extremes of licensing — up to a point.

The locked-down copyright road has been standard operating procedure for so long that many artists don’t realize another alternative exists, should they want to handle their artwork another way. Highlighting the negative aspects of Creative Commons licensing is helpful in making that decision, but many of those doing the highlighting have an ulterior motive (the “gatekeeping” aspect).

The other problem is that copyright is so ingrained in the art world at this point that even trying to make your artwork free to use is a logistical nightmare.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110423/06095414017/yes-means-yes.shtml

Having to constantly check and double-check whether you’re allowed to build on or share someone else’s artwork hampers the creative process and makes it more about compliance and permission that creativity. CC licensing alleviates a lot of that.

A third option would be better and a lot of that can be found in other forms of CC licensing. Youtube only offers one type at this point (attribution only) and my guess is that it will stay that way for awhile. Once other versions of CC licensing come into play, they’ll be expected to police uploads for non-copywritten (but CC licensed) work, and I can’t imagine they’re looking forward to whatever effort will be needed to tweak their scanning software.

But a third option is still going to remain a pipe dream until Creative Commons is treated as an equitable solution. And there are a whole lot of people who wish it would just go away.

If a person wants to control the use of their artwork, then by all means, they should use a different license. But if they want to allow it to used freely, that option should be available. I think a lot of the push towards copyright falls under the assumption that with copyright, you’ll make money with your work, whether it’s through third-party licensing or in the courtroom.

Personally, I’d like to see more CC licensing because I think it moves art forward faster. With copyright, the chilling effect of possible litigation is holding this back. I’m not saying that everyone should take whatever they want whenever they want, but rather that this licensing is a vital addition to the creative process, and I hate to see it getting passed off as a non-option because it allows too much free use. The loudest opponents of CC licensing are usually those who have already hitched their wagon to copyright and feel this somehow makes their contributions “worthless.”

I’m glad you’re looking towards a future option that will blend the two options, but I have a problem with Creative Commons being dismissed as somehow damaging not only to existing licensing processes, but artists in general.

Thanks again for your thoughts on this and I’m looking forward to your next post.