you are utterly missing the point here. you are confusing the practices of a repressive regime with argument for a strong copyright system. in fact, without *access* to one’s original work, one’s message could not be easily spread. thus, encouragement of say, an attribution noncommerical no derivs license may be in order. such a license would *not* allow members of the government, under the current US system at least, to modify the work (except as any fair use provisions would provide). i do agree that there can be cases, especially in oppressive regimes, where the modification of a work may not always be a good thing. under a creative commons license, however, this does not have to be the case.

you are confusing the lack of existence of a copyright system to one in which differing licenses can be granted to allow for socially beneficial uses of works. in fact, such a cc license would be arguably better for such a work than a traditional copyright license, as in it would be able to be freely transmitted in its original form for noncommercial uses, and the word could be spread. otherwise, with a traditional (c) license, any copying of the work (outside of fair use) would not be legal. if someone made a derivative work that was not a fair use, the author would still have the ability to sue for infringement with the cc license.

a lack of rule of law in a repressive regime and a lockdown style copyright system are in no way equivalent, and the latter is no solution to the former.

let’s look at an example of history. one of the turning points of napleon’s russian campaign in 1812 was when a french regiment was routed by cossack cavalry near novocherkassk, the historic capital of the don cossacks. a brilliant and brave event in russian history, the cossacks were celebrated in russian literature as defenders of the motherland.

the story of this event was chronicled in the epic story “The Quiet Don” which was attributed by soviet authorities to one mikhail sholokhov. through this attribute, sholokhov – a loyal party member – became ranked first among the impressive literary hierarchy of the soviet union. sholokhov became the living embodiment of the party’s central committee and routinely held speeches on the floor of the supreme soviet.

all of this would be uninteresting to this thread except for the fact that sholokhtov was not the author. the real author – fydor kryukov – was a dissident and his original version of the book (written in 1917) also contained a description of modern events quite unflattering to the soviet authorities. kryudov, a cossack himself, described how the don cossacks – direct decendents of the famous calvary – were treated with utter contempt and systematically destroyed by the bolsehviks as they attempted to defend their ancient way of life against an invasion of bolshevik ideology.

wanting to suppress the original author (a politcal prisoner who would otherwise have achieved literary fame in russia) and needing to conceal the atrocities committed against their own people, the russians took The Quiet Don into the commons, ripped, mixed, and burned the original version and released an “improved” version attributed to sholokhov.

the version published in russia and in the west catapulted sholokhov to literary – and political – fame and the censored edition gave a completely false picture of russian history.

had kryukov been able to assert his copyright and stop the publication and distribution of the false version, history might have been different.

but without copyrigtht, there was nothing kryukov could do to prevent others from misappropriating his work, robbing him of his fame, silencing his voice, and distorting his history.

now of course we know that this sort of thing is not what cc is intended to encourage. our point is that true “liberation” – that resulting from freedom of speech – is more likely to come from strong copyright than from the elevation of consumer’s rights over the rights of authors and aritsts to control the reproduction and distribution of their work.

the estonians should know this better than anyone.

Marking China as yellow in the Creative Commons map is travesty. It gives the impression that China has a reasonably consistent system of intellectual protection with the rest of the modern world when in reality, it’s stuck in the stone age.

“peter rock free distribution is meaningless (and indeed counterproductive) if what is distributed is not true and accurate. soviet authorities and their supporters in the west – routinely distorted the work of dissident authors like solzhenitsyn – to discredit them and to undermine the power of their literature.“

This is a different issue. “Distorting” someone’s work via an oppressive and totalitarian regime, is not even in the same ballpark. Are you honestly trying to tell me that “strong copyright” is what will keep a totalitarian regime at bay? I completely agree that what is distributed must have the right to keep its integrity, but you seem to be saying that “strong copyright” is what provides that measure.

“without this sort of copyright protection available to artists and authors, dissent would be stifled and the power of literature would be weakened.“

But that is obviously false. Government that is not oppressive is what provides the measure of protection to disseminate information. Do you honestly believe that it is “strong copyright” that will eventually give the Chinese populous freedom to speak and listen (i.e. participate fully in the noosphere) over TCP/IP? Are you seriously stating this? Someone comes to your home and takes your Lessig 🙂 books, wipes your hard drive clean and then remotely puts locks on what websites or files you can download – and you say this is a copyright issue(!?). Again I ask…are you seriously stating this?? I’m baffled by your perceived connection.

“such things should not be sacrificed to the short term, self-serving interests of the downloading generation.“

Are you referring to the “soviet”-like downloading generation? You just went off about liberty from oppressive regimes and then ended by equating them with “the downloading generation”. Is “downloading generation” secret code for “long-haired hippie communists”? Just a word of advice…you’re going to have a hard time convincing the oppressed of “strong copyright” if you refer to their oppressors as “the downloading generation”.

However, according to the iTeamspace wiki list of CC contacts at http://iteamspace.creativecommons.org/wiki/Contact_info , there are also either projects or at least contacts in Ghana; Nigeria; Namibia; Senegal; Zimbabwe; Hong Kong; Malaysia; Pakistan; Singapore; Thailand; Nepal; Colombia; Peru; Puerto Rico; Venezuela; Andorra; Greece; Portugal; Romania; and Ukraine.

peter rock free distribution is meaningless (and indeed counterproductive) if what is distributed is not true and accurate. soviet authorities and their supporters in the west – routinely distorted the work of dissident authors like solzhenitsyn – to discredit them and to undermine the power of their literature.

professor lessig writes the “red is yet to be liberated,” when truth be told it was authors like solzhenitsyn in control of their own literary work that did more to liberate these regions than anything for which the west can claim credit.

when we say “impenetrable” we mean just that – copyright protection so strong that works of literature – like the gulag archipelago – cannot be modified, censored, or distorted by anyone. without this sort of copyright protection available to artists and authors, dissent would be stifled and the power of literature would be weakened.

such things should not be sacrificed to the short term, self-serving interests of the downloading generation.