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.
I think you made the right decision. Thanks for listening.
I, too, am glad that you reached this decision. I have to admit though – it’s going to take a short amount of time for the “sting” to go away. I really wish the powers that be would have issued a call to arms (as in the latter part of Larry’s post) before they were even approached by BzzAgent. WE are your field soldiers and are fully capable. I guess it’s water under the bridge, and it’s not like CC approached them, so… heading over to the wiki…
I think the Red Cross is an awesome example of a group that could benefit from GoodBzz without the kind of criticism I’ve seen here. Was that a real or hypothetical example? I’d almost definitely get involved in BzzAgent if there was a GoodBzz blood donation campagin, but I can’t find such info from their main page w/o signing up first.
You are moving ever closer to the “method” that must be used because it’s not that some “marketing method” is “evil” but that centralized hierarchies typified by the very oxymoronic phrase “intellectual property rights” stand in the way of universal connection: everyone/everything/everywhere/always connected!
In a similar vein at your Toronto WWW plenary, you asked what to do about the imminent takeover of the network by the corporate devils and were given the advice to “chain your wheelchair to the doors of the draft board” or some such.
As your “radicalization” has evolved you’ve maintained the last grasps at the old copyright/trademark/patent absurdities for reasons of convenience and the fear of scaring off those who, like me, still get royalties from stuff older than those reading this. I like the checks but I know that as long as we allow ourselves to pretend that creativity is isolated from the shoulders of past giants and that “new” medicines’ patenting is not a means of encouraging research/development but a weapon in the arsenal of the enemy, we will continue under the thumb of our “evil twin”.
Until we realize that we are ALL in this together and ALL members of one another, the notion of “MINE!” in relation to who “deserves” recognition as the originator of just about anything is plain silly, we will continue forgetting that if some of the “near eternal” copyright proposals had been in place a few centuries ago, Shakespeare would own the world – and more recently if Shannon had been able to get “a nickel every time we used the word ‘digital'” his propping up of IBM would have made that place bigger than God.
We’ve got to live this thing because it’s reasonably that the celebration of creativity need not put us all into a caste system based on misguided arguments re primacy.
Keep on keeping on.
Love.
kevin it is comment’s like yours that make it very hard for us
to take CC advocates seriously.
I have to admit though – it’s going to take a short amount of time for the “sting” to go away.
for chrissake it’s not like being betrayed by your partner, or loosing a parent. it is a stupid little bagatelle. someone agreed with a website to shill for your religion. they were not sufficiently vetted by the disciples and proved pure enough to carry the message of your scripture so you ended the relationship.
your “sting” has been our amusement.
the zealous attacks on bzzagent – and the open hostility to pecuniary interest – say more about the agenda of the CC movement than any amount of third party shilling ever could.
Excellent news, Larry! I am delighted to see you and your colleagues at CC grasp the nettle and make this decision.
We all make mistakes, but the challenge is always to learn from them and to turn errors into wisdom. The silver lining in this furore for CC is that you have now embarked on a course of action which I believe will prove to be more effective, stronger, and will have more of a long-term benefit for all involved than the relationship with BzzAgents could ever have given you. I have no doubt that there is the enthusiasm out there to make a SpreadCC-style campaign work (although I am sure it will not be without its own hiccups).
Insofar as BzzAgents are concerned, I hope that Dave has learnt that careful consideration before responding to criticism is the way forward. I also hope that, despite how much of himself he puts into his business, he learns that *he is not his business* and criticism of one is not criticism of the other. That’s a hard lesson to learn, and as an entrepreneur, I know just how hard. I also hope that he will be able to see through the anger of some of the comments and be capable of pulling the truths to the fore, as I think there were some valuable points made which could help him improve his modus operandi.
As for me, I certainly have learnt something: I knew that Creative Commons was a cause I supported, but I hadn’t realised just how important it was to me until I thought that it was being threatened. I’ve been planning to volunteer for CC or the EFF for ages now, but haven’t because there never seems to be enough time. With the new wiki, I will be able to contribute a little bit on a regular ongoing basis (a form of support that I think is more important than giving up a chunk of time once in a blue moon).
So, here’s the the future of CC!
Mice – sorry my pun offended you. It was meant to humorously show the brand loyalty I have to CC and not to be a grand philosophical statement. Guess I should have used some emoticons. 🙂
kevin, apologies are due to you amigo.
it’s going to take a short amount of time…
we totally missed the short. emoticons don’t help if we don’t read the sentence properly in the first place.
hope we did not offend you too much. we can barely speak here without offending someone a little.
Wow. An opportunity squandered. This is why CC, and all the other worthwhile causes out there will never be victorious in their respective fights.
While CC may not be willing to “stoop” this low, the RIAA and Disney certainly will. “stoop” lower, even. While CC may not want a company (ooh such a dirty word) to help them educate people and spread the word, the RIAA would gladly murder their own mothers in their sleep to pay ninjas to assasinate bands who give their music, royalty-free, to web-radio stations. They’ll have george bush himself give a heartwarming speach, clad in american flags, standing atop a pile of dead terrorists, holding a small boys hand, saying “free culture hurts the economy, and is terrorism.”
So, good luck guys, with that whole fighting giant corporations with their hands in the pockets of politicians. Seriously, i want to see this cause succeed. But i seriously doubt it will after seeing such a rabid, mob-mentality, response to good intentioned help.
the zealous attacks on bzzagent – and the open hostility to pecuniary interest say more about the agenda of the CC movement than any amount of third party shilling ever could.
I really like Three Blind Mice’s opinions. They are witty, incisive, fresh and honest. You should try agreeing with them some time, it’s fun. They really are the coolest cats, well, mice around. Giggle and flutter eyelids. Sorry, was I meant to type that last bit? Do I still get my points?
I believe in CC and use CC copyrights for my creative work. I also believe in the authentic and transparent nature of BzzAgent’s business.
In the end, I find this sad. Sad, because we chose to fight instead of cooperate for the greater good and benefit of CC. Sad, because we chose so often to be elitist in our opinions and to ignore the benefits, rather than working together to help CC grow. Sad, because we are so quick to destroy just because we can.
If anything, I hope that all of those who shunned this partnership and took the time to share your thoughts will take it upon themselves to carry things forward and promote CC.
Back up your passionate criticism which has ended this partnership. Step up and take on the challenge. Volunteer your time. As there is no relationship here to criticize any longer, I’m sure you have the time.
Extremely well handled. Now, let’s have “love the CC employees” day so that they keep working as hard as they do for as little as they do.
Maybe I’m dense, but does this have something to do with the wiki?
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/DraGons
Thanks for dropping BzzAgent. It was the right decision.
That’s not to say that BzzAgent is evil, it’s just not the right kind of instrument for this kind of cause.
Wow. An opportunity squandered… While CC may not be willing to “stoop” this low, the RIAA and Disney certainly will.
I seem to recall this guy Boromir, in this Lord of the Rings thing, saying something like, “We must use the tool of the enemy against him.” And maybe how, in that context, it wasn’t the best idea. The more generalized concept being: just because your opponent uses a tool or method effectively, doesn’t mean you must use it as well; and even the extended part of the meaning in LotR, that using the tool of the enemy can turn you to his side, perhaps applies here.
In this case, like Prof. Lessig, I don’t even think you have to make value judgements about BzzAgent. I think how and why the CC message is communicated isn’t merely important for reasons of integrity, morality, or authenticity; it’s actually part of the message.
Commons Music put up our proposal on the wiki (currently at the bottom of the opening page).
Ideas requested and encouraged.
While your LotR quote is quite persuasive. Please explain how using BzzAgent will turn CC into the RIAA or Disney, because there’s a lot of stuff inbetween now and your projection, and I’m having a difficult time envisioning the chain of events.
Hooray! I hope the idea of following SpreadFirefox was inspired by my previous comment!
I’ve posted my thoughts on my blog.
While CC may not want a company (ooh such a dirty word) to help them educate people and spread the word…
I couldn’t care less how BzzAgent is organized; it’s the methods I object to.
Did I just read Lawrence Lessig saying he was going to “steal Firefox’s ‘spreadFirefox’ idea”? “steal” an idea? I thought reusing ideas wasn’t theft because ideas are non-consumable goods. We should probably avoid language like “steal” in this context — that’s a rhetorical trick the other side employs to make make the reuse of ideas sound immoral and wrong.
I think we should also ask how to prevent something like this happening in the future. I don’t know what the governance structure is of CC, but many, many people are using the licences.
How and why was this idea approved in the first place?
I wouldn’t use the word “evil”, but a few words like “smarmy” come to mind. Those people just seem like the sort of “marketing types” that make me uneasy, starting with their use of a silly, “cutesy” misspelling of “buzz” in their name. And their technique fits the definition of “astroturfing”, something that just seems phony.
Dan, I wouldn’t even use the term “smarmy” or “phony” as I believe the service they offer is perfectly legitimate.
As critical thinkers, the majority of us have been trained to reject anything we perceive as remotely disingenuous. While I don’t believe BzzAgent’s principles are anything but honest there is an intrinsic stigma we instinctively apply to those “selling” something. Be it a product, an idea or a process, it is something that we discount regardless of intentions. In this respect, I would argue that this is the only decision which could have been made.
level 9 opined:
Few of us who post here are rabid (though I have my doubts about the mice sometimes). I thought there were many excellent points made on why BzzAgent’s methods, well-intentioned or not, were potentially harmful to the overall goal.
Don’t confuse unanimity with mob-mentality. The fact that almost everyone who posted felt that the alliance was a bad idea doesn’t mean they were acting as a mob. By that definition, any group of people who are in agreement on something constitute a “mob”. A “mob” response would have been unquestioning, blind rejection of BzzAgent without any better reason than that they were an “evil corporation”; something even I, as anti-corporate as they come, never said. Neither did any of the posts I read. It seemed everyone who posted in the negative had a valid concern which they expressed in support of their position. It was hardly a “mob”.
I will take you and David Balter at your word that your intentions were honorable. I wish you or he would have taken more time to answer the negative arguments made about your company and its methods (for example, you posted about how Agents such as yourself genuinely did like the products you reported on; but you never addressed the moral hazard argument or the possibility that not all Agents were as ethical as yourself, nor did you comment on our perception that “product placement” cheapens and clouds discourse). That you did not do so, and now storm off in a textual huff accusing all and sundry of being closed-minded fanatics, strikes me as…well, closed-minded. You apparently cannot even admit the possibility that our concerns are genuine and (to our minds at least) well-founded.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe by not continuing the BzzAgent alliance, CC won’t grow as fast as it otherwise might. But let me leave you with two thoughts. 1) CC will rise or fall based entirely on its merits, not by storebought “buzz” or astroturf campaigns. 2) If you and BzzAgent are so noble and so supportive of CC’s effort, you’ll go ahead and promote it anyway.
…Which is exactly what BzzAgent founder Dave Balter is suggesting his agents do. And already, I’ve seen tentative steps in the wiki from at least one agent who supports CC’s cause.
While the process has been public and (in some cases) ugly, as far as the outcomes are concerned, everyone involved in this seems, now, to be doing the right thing.
cross posted on the wiki, joi, and lessing…
here’s what i’d like to see from bzzagent / dave balter if they’re really going to support the cc with our “spread firefox-like campaign” as joi mentioned. i also think this would help bzzagent build some trust and credibility in the cc community.
1. dave, can you outline and/or release the timeline of the typical campaign. ideally, a budget and staff you’d would have deployed for the cc, just to give us an idea.
2. do you distribute “talking points” to the agents? if so, what do they usually address. what would your suggestions be for the creative commons?
3. can you describe the metrics you provide your clients, and how we could do the same for our efforts? would you suggest we measure new content cc’d, #’s of “word of mouth reports” etc..? if we need to measure interactions, what tools do you suggest we consider? i’m not sure if we need to report interactions, but i think if we get some great new artists, photographers, musicians, authors, etc.. in the cc- we could at least do a few case studies.
4. this many of us are bloggers, use rss, use flickr, use technorati, del,icio.us- how do you suggest we use these types of connecting technologies for our campaign. should we do cc meetups? mailing lists? i’m curious about your suggestions.
5. what content creators do you think we should go after first? real examples would help a lot.
perhaps you could release this as a pdf / doc / whatever under a cc license and publish it here, the wiki or on bzzagent.com
-phillip torrone
-feel free to email as well pt at oreilly dot com
While the process has been public and (in some cases) ugly, as far as the outcomes are concerned, everyone involved in this seems, now, to be doing the right thing.
And in the interest of doing so myself: an apology.
to phillip torrone … a bit late, don’t you think. its over bud.
I am interested in CC neither as a lifestyle or a thing to plaster on my arm in an armband, but as someone releasing a very large, years-in-making project, I was delighted to find groundwork laid for a way to have a third choice between “public domain” and “yeah, I have full copyright, but trust me, I won’t sue”. CC gave me that third choice, and in fact dozens of variations between that choice.
I found out about CC from weblogs, from archive.org, from a number of mentions of “….and it’s licensed with a creative commons license!” that I saw and eventually clicked on and read. In other words, I saw it from people making stuff that I wanted to read, hear and see, and who mentioned this was how they would provide their works, and I got interested.
My project is going somewhere in the range of a few thousand individuals; the information on my project and mentions in the DVDs themselves all talk about how it is Creative Commons licensed, and people will hear of it that way, and word will grow.
I figured that’s how it was going to work. Was this third choice not growing fast enough? Why was the CC group worried?
Wow. You folks listened. You actually listened. I am impressed, big-time. Good for you. Now I want to race out and help. so, over to the wiki….
Jason wrote: Was this third choice not growing fast enough? Why was the CC group worried?
The only person who thought CC needed help, or to be “augmented” or that it wasn’t growing fast enough was Dave Balter.
The idea that CC was somehow falling short was introduced into this discussion by Balter. Go back and read his blog posts about CC. Now others are beginning to parrot the same line. Is the ulterior motive any clearer? A marketing company tells you you’re good, but not good enough. You need our help.
Its sad that CC is actually buying this stuff. Have some pride.
If BzzAgent is to be involved with CC in the future, its role should be clearly demarcated and visible to all.
I object to the use of the phrase “no rights respected”. While I believe in granting people, for limited times, exclusive rights to their works, I think it’s unfair to suggest that “no rights respected” represents the other end of the “rights” spectrum. “No rights respected” belongs on the same side as “all rights reserved”, like an image in a mirror that is reversed but on the same side of the frame.
I think that “no rights reserved” and “no rights conferred” would be a better way to describe the other end of the copyright spectrum, as it represents the public domain that was once an integral part of the copyright bargain. While we’re promoting less restrictive copyright terms, let’s not forget that even the CC licenses constitute a limited monopoly that should expire after a reasonable period of time.
That “no rights respected” is somehow the equivalent of “no rights conferred” is an unfair way to represent the copyright bargain. Let’s not forget that copyright is not a natural right, but a statutory one.
thanks for listening. FP are happy to be able to use CC again
the ugly side of dot.communism
deus ex machina,
Does that mean the United States’ founding fathers were communists?
Jay eye enn gee oh,
Jay eye enn gee oh,
Jay eye enn gee oh,
and Jingo was his name-o.
In the same vein as BzzAgent …
USWeb remakes the art of the Shill…
It looks like the folks at USWeb.com, a leading Internet marketing firm, have taken the idea of shilling one step further and could very well be in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act. [Bravo 411 | May 06, 2005].