The Commonists are Coming

garym — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 17:45:59 -0500

Executive director of Creative Commons Glenn Otis Brown wonders what Bill Gates really means when he says of the free and shareable licence lobby as "some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers..."

Surely, says Glenn, we aren't to suppose that Bill means to blacklist the entire community of free trade within the Creative Commons ...

"I get sad when people cheapen words like 'communist' or 'fascist' by throwing them around recklessly, especially given what those words meant in the not-so-distant past ... Stalinist purges, the Berlin Wall, tanks in Budapest -- that's communism.
[ via Wired News - Feb 15, 2005 ]

Lawrence Lessig chimed in on the debate to propose that "Copyright reform advocates are 'commonists', not 'communists' ... and thereby sparked a whole product line of new Commonist Manifesto fashions ... CC-licensed, of course.

I predict this also heralds the number 1 most asked IT-interview question of 2005:

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of a commonist organization."

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The Commonists are Coming