We read; we’ve discussed; we’ve lost sleep; we’ve decided.
First, thank you. Thank you Suw for calling on us to account. Thanks to everyone else who added their view, both supportive and critical. What we started, you’ve taken as yours. There’s no greater compliment than this: the criticism of friends. This discussion has been extraordinary. It has been extraordinarily helpful to me. Thank you.
Second, thanks to BzzAgent. We didn’t seek them out. They asked to help. We are grateful for help. I don’t share the view of some that BzzAgent is evil. Words like “creepy” are unfair weapons in any fair rhetorical fight. I hate most marketing; I hate the models of most marketing; I think we should be encouraging experiments in spreading a message, and learning what’s heard. That, in my view, is BzzAgent’s model. And so long as they adhere to certain fundamental values — transparency being the most important — I think what they’re doing is just fine. I would certainly reconsider the friendship if a friend tried to sell me on an idea or product without revealing that he was a BzzAgent. But when friends who work at Microsoft defend Microsoft’s latest, or friends who work on a political campaign ask me my views on a particular ad, “creepy” is not what I feel. We all live different lives; some of us are lucky enough to work for people, or companies, or candidates we believe in. It would be a weirdly prudish world if we weren’t allowed to share our views with friends, just because those views are inspired by, or correlate with, or benefit, our employer. Disinterested is uninteresting. And we are all intelligent enough to deal with interested views.
Third, I am sorry for the bile that has been spilled across the wires about this. I wish we could learn to do this less. Dave Balter was wrong to respond to Suw as he did. He has recognized that, and he has apologized. His apology was not clear enough at first; it is clear enough now. He was, as he now acknowledges, out of line to bring the word “liar” so close to Corante.
But as disappointed as I was when I read his post, I recognized the response. Balter’s an entrepreneur. Every good entrepreneur comes identify with his or her company just as a parent identifies with a child. You imagine your reaction if someone published false things about your child, and you can begin to understand Balter’s response to all this. It wasn’t a productive response; it was poorly calculated. But in that, it revealed the integrity of his own commitment to his company. I have made similar mistakes many times. And I knew this mistake as a child. My dad was an entrepreneur. He gave a huge part of his life to his company. He was as sensitive about harm to it as he was about harm to me. Not out of proportion. But even within proportion, anger is a understandable response. Balter is giving a huge part of his life to build something. No doubt, like all of us, he wonders whether he his giving more than he should; he wonders whether what he gives will be enough. And so when criticism happens that he believes is unfair, rage is not the right response. It is just the human response. Were Balter the evil marketeer some suggest he is, then the raw and true lash of his post would never have made it out of the “brainstorming” room. Instead, the polished, and sterile response of every company managed by managers would have displaced the true reaction of a founder. Balter was wrong. He apologized. We should understand, and respect, the humanity in each.
Forth, and for all the extremely powerful reasons these discussions have mustered, we were wrong to use this tool to spread our message. This is not, again, because BzzAgent is evil. It is not because it shouldn’t be used to spread any message. It is not because understanding achieved through networks of humans is worse than the understanding produced through a survey. It is instead because this way of spreading our message weakens the power of our message.
Creative Commons, as you’ve reminded us, is a movement. Its aim is to get creators to take responsibility for the environment (as our founder Jamie Boyle puts it) of creativity that we live in. It gives artists and authors free tools with which to mark their creativity with the freedoms they intend their creativity to carry. These tools help creators say something. With them, creators stand in the space between the extremes of “All Rights Reserved” and “No Rights Respected,” and they say, this space is right.
Creators who do this do so, I hope, because they believe an environment of balance is better than an environment of either extreme. They thus mark their work with a sign of that balance. But it is critical within this economy that they do this voluntarily. That they join because they believe.
If there is power in this movement, it comes from this volunteer economy. That doesn’t mean we won’t pay people to work for us; it doesn’t mean we don’t think people should be paid for their work. What it means is that we can’t dilute the meaning of what it says when someone says, “I’m a commoner.” (I’m sure no one ever says that, but you know what I mean.) Authenticity is essential. The power of the authentic act — an artist giving up remix rights; an author allowing her book to be shared freely — is the power that makes this movement grow.
That authenticity is not jeopardized, I believe, by the fact we have (a small number of underpaid) employees at Creative Commons. No one here is doing it for the money. Nor is that authenticity jeopardized when a company “partners” with us (though again, none of our “partnerships” are partnerships in the traditional sense): Everyone understands companies are paid to pick winning strategies; when they align with us, that simply reinforces our strategy. But I have come to agree that that authenticity would be jeopardized by messengers whose message is mixed. If BzzAgents do as their rules require (ie, reveal their affiliation) then the person who hears their message wonders: are you saying this because you believe it, or are you saying this because it will earn you a reward? And if it is the reward, then where is my reward? What’s my cut?
We of course believe there is a reward — to creativity in general, and creators in particular — from experimenting with different ways to make creativity available. But when someone sells you on that idea, we don’t want there to be any doubt about why you are being sold. The meaning of the messenger, and hence the message, is unambiguous only if the motive of the messenger is unambiguous as well.
If I had cars to sell, or the meaning of a brand like “Nike” to understand, or if I were the head of the Red Cross, I’d be eager to experiment with the tools BzzAgent has built. Success for those enterprises turns on something different from belief. But if I were the Pope, or a candidate for the Senate (and the chances of me being either are precisely equal), then I’d need something more than persuasive argument in my messengers. As with Creative Commons, I’d need there to be no uncertainty about the meaning of their being a messenger.
So what will we do instead. BzzAgent’s idea was a good one. We need to spread our message beyond the communities in which it now lives. And so we need a structure to help achieve that spread. This structure must be consistent, in means and ends, with the who we are. It will need volunteers, and ideas, and energy to make it work.
We don’t know what that looks like yet. We think we want to steal Firefox’s “spreadFirefox” idea. But we’re not yet sure. So we’ve launched a wiki to begin the discussion. We’d welcome advice from anyone — including BzzAgent. How do messengers message best? How can we learn something from their encounters? What tools can we use that do more than they cost? What places should we take our message? These are the sort of questions a campaign manager answers in a political campaign. We need them answered for us. And so we’ve begun the process to figure this out, and once we’ve groked it, we’ll build it.
But in all this, you that have taken what we started and made it yours, you need to help. We need broader public support, or support in a broader public. You need to help us make that happen. Part of that help happens in this space. But it is extremely easy to live life in the opinioning fields, and never live life face to face. It is fundamental mistake of all modern politics: mediation. We need something more than mediating structures (whether blogs, or newspapers, or television). We need people who look people straight in the eyes and say, this is a good idea, and you should try it.
You all know how hard that is. It is so much easier to hide behind these virtual walls. But our movement needs just what BzzAgent wanted to give us: arguments in the flesh, and not just on the screen. You’re right that we need that from the truly authentic rather than the ambiguously authentic — a million Cory Doctorow march rather than buzzing “agents.” So help us build that — by continuing to call us on mistakes, and just as importantly, by doing what you say BzzAgents should not.
