Freedom of Choice (The Copyright Kind)
I’m a lifelong musician and supporter of the arts, online and off. Music led me to study copyright, which led me to study technology. The three don’t always play nicely together as anyone who hasn’t had their head completely in the sand for the past fifteen years would acknowledge. Recently, I attended an alumni event hosted by my undergraduate alma mater, Berklee College of Music. I spent most of my night discussing copyright law with a fellow alum who works at a rights organization. I mentioned my legal interests and inevitably we wound up discussing the role of Creative Commons (CC) in the current online ecosystem. Once he said something along the lines of “Creative Commons is just an arm of Google, and has all the tech companies do their dirty work,” I knew this would be an interesting night. The rights organizations have an essential role to play, I simply disagree with their litigation choices in a few recent matters and think there are more constructive ways of achievi