defending the creative commons license

interesting question came up today in the office. there’s a site, surferdiary.com, that reposts every entry on if:book. they do the same for several other sites, presumably as a way to generate traffic to their site and ultimately to gather clicks on their google supplied ads. if:book entries are posted with a creative commons license which allows reuse with proper attribution but forbids commercial use. surferdiary’s use seems to be thoroughly commercial. some of my colleagues think we should go after them as a way of defending the creative commons concept. would love to know what people think?

8 thoughts on “defending the creative commons license”

  1. joe

    This seems clear cut. Every entry reposted; yes I’d agree you should go after them as a way of defending the integrity of the creative commons concept.

  2. pete

    My thoughts are posted here. Snip (sans links):

    Well… you could take it as flattery, and be thankful that they’re not hot-linking your images as well~!

    Seriously though, the wholesale syndication and re-publication of CC’d blogs is becoming a growing concern. If the behaviour of surferdiary bothers you, you should let their site admin know. (S)he does appear to be violating the terms – and certainly the spirit – of the ‘non-commercial’ component of the licence.

    You should also remember, however, that this additional exposure may support – rather than hinder – the longer term goals of if:book, similarly to how file-sharing etc. seems to benefit – rather than harm – long-tail artists.

    Whatever you do, please don’t be heavy handed about it. Creative Commons is a reaction to the “control everything” mentality of the copyright maximalists, and the tactics they’ve employed to achieve their aims.

    I’m enjoying how this post is duplicated on the front page of surferdiary right now: http://www.surferdiary.com/books/?p=711 !!

  4. Ron

    A belief in “remix culture” seems irrelevant to the real issue at hand: the violation of a license that specifically prohibits commercial use.

  5. PeteCashmore

    Whether you want to go after this splogger is your choice, but in general I think bloggers should welcome addition exposure and treat it like an advertising opportunity. I don’t think splogs are a good thing, but RSS makes all kinds of syndication possible – legitimate or otherwise. If you can figure out how to make the sploggers work for you as your distributors, then you can turn the entire situation around. I know that sounds like a bizarre way of looking at things, so I’ve explained it in a blog post:
    http://mashable.com/2005/12/31/why-online-media-should-be-free-and-why-we-should-embrace-the-splogophere/

  6. marsha

    If you do not own creative commons you are not able to sue under their license. That’s their right. You can sue for unathorized republication of your copyright, which is inherent your original words.

  7. pete

    Snip from Wired (How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet):

    Other enterprising scammers manipulate the affiliate system by creating phony blogs – spam blogs, or splogs – that automatically generate content by continually copying bits from other Web sites, mixing in popular keywords, then signing up the resulting mélange as a Google or Yahoo! affiliate. By using software to link themselves repeatedly to well-known real blogs, splogs trick search engines into listing them high on their results list, thus generating traffic, which in turn generates ad clicks. When unsuspecting Internet searchers visit splogs, they end up clicking the ad links in a frustrated attempt to find some coherent text. Thousands of splogs exist, snarling the blogosphere – and the search engines that index it – in spam. Splogs are too profitable to be readily discouraged. According to RSS to Blog, a Brooklyn-based firm that sells automatic-blog software, sploggers can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month in PPC income, all without any human effort.

    My thoughts: http://intermaweb.net/2005/12/31/the-ethics-of-syndication/.

  8. bowerbird

    ron said:
    > A belief in “remix culture” seems
    > irrelevant to the real issue at hand:
    > the violation of a license that
    > specifically prohibits commercial use.
    do you really not know the “traditional”
    counterargument to what you just said?
    (it’s a new tradition, but well-established.)
    and the counterargument to that one?
    and the one that comes after that?
    and so on, and so forth, blah blah blah?
    the dance is already well-scripted, really!,
    even if some people don’t know all the steps,
    and if you wanna know where it’ll take _you_,
    just answer the question that i asked before:
    do you really believe in remix culture, or not?
    -bowerbird

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