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Most clueless column of the year?
The often clueless John Dvorak -- who has a habit of shooting from the hip and stirring the waters without knowing what the hell he's talking about -- reaches new depths of cluelessness in his latest column in PC Magazine. Dvorak writes about Creative Commons:
"This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes."
Wow. Astonishingly dumb. As one writer on the pho mailing list put it: "Dvorak speaks out of tremendous ignorance of copyright law."
July 22, 2005 at 09:13 PM in Digital rights & copyright | Permalink
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Comments
The article makes something very clear. Dvorak hasn't got any clue about the topic of alternative licensing; I think the final line says everything:
"And it seems to actually weaken the copyrights you have coming to you without Creative Commons. Oh, brother!"
He seems to have rather missed the very point of CC.
Posted by: Melissa Della | Jul 22, 2005 10:23:34 PM
an old man came to my studio the other day with 3 dvd's. he wanted me to remove content from each of them and compile it into a mix on a fourth. he was headed off to his 50th highschool reunion and wanted to show music videos from his graduating year to the rest of his class. of course i spoke with him about the implications of drm as i ripped those discs and gave him what he wanted (already owned). he was stunned at the reality of copyright law and very interested in the cc work around. though he's right wing and opposed to every other position i hold he is now in our camp. education fills the bed with great partners.
Posted by: stephen bates | Jul 23, 2005 12:33:49 PM
Good point, Melissa, And great story, Stephen! Education is our greatest ally.
Posted by: JD | Jul 23, 2005 1:44:06 PM
How about addressing his points directly rather than simple name calling?! He has some good points and your post does nothing to dissuage anyone agreeing with his views.
Posted by: | Jul 26, 2005 9:43:49 AM
Clint Sharp wrote up a nice long post on this.
http://clintsharp.com/archives/2005/07/19/john-c-dvorak-and-ziff-davis-the-attention-whores/
Personally I think on rare occasions it's not worth wasting a lot of breath. Dvorak is just clueless and no amount of explaining is going to cure it. Though I appreciate your efforts, and well, on occassional a really well written rant really does help get out the pent up agression.
Posted by: Michael Meiser | Jul 31, 2005 8:27:02 AM
