He that Filches From Me My Good Name

Danny O'Brien has an interesting meditation on the difference between controlling who copies something, and controlling who claims to have created it. Cory Doctorow makes an illuminating observation on the same:

I'm reminded of the fact that the original Creative Commons license allowed creators to choose whether they wanted their works attributed to them or not, but after a year or two, it was discovered that nearly every CC user turned the attribution switch on while generating the license -- everyone wanted correct attribution, even when they were giving away free copies.

It's reputation that counts.

It's (Open) Party Time!

For anyone in Swinging London 2.0 next Wednesday, the place to be is the Open Rights Group party:

It will be a night of public domain and openly licensed music, remixed visuals and free culture goodie bags, with an uber-geek raffle which includes the opportunity to be written in to Cory Doctorow's next book, or receive a signed keyboard from our patron Neil Gaiman. Danny O'Brien, who founded the ORG pledge, will be speaking.

And if you were wondering,

The Open Rights Group is a new and fast-growing NGO focused on raising awareness of issues such as privacy, identity, data protection, access to knowledge and copyright reform.

All things that are likely to be dear to readers of these pages.