Carping Over Creative Commons 276
scubacuda writes "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I do not. It has little or no significance, because it is based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view of how content intermediaries function.' He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public. 'What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet.' Kling points to Bayesian Intermediaries (filters based on flexible keyword weights and 'trained' by user preferences) and weblogs as good ways to filter out the drivel that many content creators produce. (Dan Gilmore and Siva Vaidhayanatha respond, to which Kling responds in his blog."
CC needs NoEndorsement (Score:2, Interesting)
* Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
I don't know why the CC people didn't include something like this.
Interesting meaphore.... (Score:1, Interesting)
The million dollar question would then be using his medaphore. When the stuff coming out of the filter tastes like shit, shouldn't someone replace it?
My main complaint with the ideas is this. The music industry does not filter out the 'bad' music it only filter out the different stuff. The only thing the systems as it stands today gaurentees is homogeny. I'd prefer to sift through all the 'bad' music if I could cling to the hope that there might be more 'good' stuff out there as well.
He's not really right either (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyhow, while I think he's right to object to the notion that publishers are simply vampires extorting money from noble artists, it's extremely incomplete to say that they're valuable primarily as filters. They do add value that way, but that's the role that's the easiest for the public to fill.
The more important things they do are developing and polishing musicians, editing books, creating the financial and organizational infrastructure to make major movies. His plan does nothing to address that.
Meta-blog (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, having just published a book... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, we were entirely responsible for all artwork, text, and any major editing.
An outside compositor was hired (at MH's expense) to do layout and a bit of editing, although this was done working closely with us, and was primarily related to missing figures, a bit of proofreading, etc. The bottom line is that had we been willing to do the work of the compositor, which was basically formatting, we wouldn't have needed the publisher at all to produce the final content. Even the actual printing is contracted out.
In our case, it is the publishers primary job to market the book, not to tweak the content.
Sturgeon's Law and Garbage (Score:2, Interesting)
However, the notion that publishers are filtering with my best interests in mind is also part of that 90 percent.Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [fair.org]
And beyond that even, I'd have to say that one man's treasure is another man's garbage. [slashdot.org]
Re:"filter out the drivel" (Score:3, Interesting)
But in reality,
This is one of the things that bugs me about Google News... yes, it does a great job of aggregating links to news stories. But there's no people behind it, and it feels that way when when I look through it.
Re:So are Bayesian Filters really that good? (Score:3, Interesting)
value (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"filter out the drivel" (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, this can be seen as a benefit, too. No person's views and unconscious bias are inflicted on you; instead, you get all available sources and opinions presented as equals in their worthiness. Then it's the reader's task to make an educated judgement of the issue, as free of editorial bias as possible. It requires critical reading skills, but I personally prefer to chew my own news, as opposed to digesting ready-chewed stuff.
Re: Nice Strawman (Score:4, Interesting)
In my experience (and I have an interest in a small publisher [coachlightpress.com]), most mainstream (read: large, established, monolithic) publishers are rejecting work because it doesn't conform to a rather dull, stale, old recipe. And much of what they do publish is very definitely "not polished" and quite often not economically viable. For books, the editing process seems to have been horribly compromised, probably because of cost cutting.
In My Humble Opinion, it's the mainstream content publishers that are using spin doctors to belittle and demean the concept of a Creative Commons. It's in their selfish (and greedy) interests to do so. Those of us interested in the CC should ignore them and get on with what we want to do!
Re:Do we need this? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for popularity and quality; I think popularity within a correct subgroup isn't a bad measure. That correct subgroup may not be "US total sales" (though for me with respect to music it actually works pretty well but I've got mainstream musical taste). For example you might like "Total sales within Jazz, or college radio playlist or...". Finding the right population for prefiltering is much easier than doing your own filtering.
The column is true to a point... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kling manages to miss that that last sentence is what the CC aims to address. If that undercuts publishers, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Re:"filter out the drivel" (Score:2, Interesting)
Has this author ever read Lessig??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Traditional economic arguments in favor of IPR assert that without them there will be no good content in the first place, since authors have little incentive to produce work.
But if ALL "content is crap", there is no justification for intellectual property protection in the first place. If the world gets BAD content by paying for it, and BAD content by not paying for it, the economically optimal solution is to have BAD content for FREE!
The discussion of Bayesian networks is completely irrelevant since what is at stake is a more fundamental assertion about how and why individuals innovate.
Score: Kling 0, Lessig 1.
Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but that depends entirely on the 'publisher' in question. The RIAA, for example, got around this nasty problem by conglomerating many companies into one 'Association' and then making it cumpolsory for content creators to sign over their works in exchange for publication, thus making the publishers the temporary 'owners' of the content, and the associated revenue. Lawrence Lessig, in The Future of Ideas quoted the founder of MP3.com (whom I forget-but is now at Lindows) who was barraged by RIAA types who could not understand why MP3.com did not demand ownership of new artist's works before 'publishing' the music. The quote (paraphrased from memory) was something like:
"Why are you helping the next Madonna without owning the next Madonna first?!"
You are correct in saying that the the middleman should be put back in his/her place, but they have a lot more clout -- reference MP3.com's collapse...
---rhad
Re:Sewage?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, but I'm not wrapped up in the idea of physical publishing. May I transition your points back into the digital-network arena?
Physically producing a book is a difficult task that requires time and money...
So is digitally producing a book, but the cost is distributed differently.
Writing a book only needs a monkey and a typewriter. Writing a good book needs a "talented author". Typically, it also needs a talented editor, and not simply "some friends who are willing to proofread". So right there we see two things: First, that simply authoring content doesn't guarantee the quality of that content. Second, a good editor is part of the process--a vital part currently supplied by the publisher. So it seems that publishers do provide a useful service. And since neither writing nor editing are limited to the physical realm, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the publishers shouldn't continue to add some of the same value in the digital arena as they do in the physical arena.
But what value could they add? Well, there's the aforementioned editing, which is pretty important. We can probably discard the actual "publishing" value-add, since digital networks pretty much take care of that already. But digital publishing tools and management systems will undoubtedly become more important as time goes on, so that may change.
Then there's marketing, which is the process by which publishers attempt to alert you to works you wouldn't necessarily become aware of or know how to find on your own. On the Internet, of course, we have the opposite problem: all the content is readily available and easily found. Instead of marketing, a process of pushing new content on us; we need filtering, a process of blocking the unneeded, unwanted, or otherwise valueless content. This is what Kling is talking about: filtering adds value to content, by sorting it into "valuable/not valuable" categories. I don't know about you, but I want the most efficent, most effective content filters I can get. The first company to meet that need will dominate the digital publishing world, as well it should. It will be adding quite a lot of value to the growing ocean of content, after all.
Seems the proof is in the pudding (Score:3, Interesting)
Sharpshooting CC in its infancy makes me think this guy is just afraid of change.
Who's afraid of the Creative Commons?
Let your friends do the filtering (Score:2, Interesting)