I've got my beefs with the Creative Commons, and I think Lessig is just plain wrong about how to deal with public domain, but I've never seen him commit the kind of intellectual hanky-panky his detractor, Andrew Keen, displays. Here's my comment on Keen's blog:
Andrew,
You write, "...everybody knows that, as the rabble-rousing founder of Creative Commons, Larry has lauded -- implicitly or otherwise...". A bit about the form of your argument, and I'll use Schopenhauer's "The Art of Controversy" (ToAC) as my model, so we have a common reference point. You made a claim, you were challenged to substantiate that claim. At the time of the challenge it seems you fell silent. In the relative safety of your blog you write as quoted, said quote being quite a nice example of what ToAC calls "Postulate What Has To Be Proved". But there's another cheap shot in your words, built on what ToAC would describe as "The Homonymy", in which one claims credit for refuting X when one has in reality only addressed a homonym of X. On the one hand, take the case of using a story in the public domain and turning it into the world's first full length animated feature film. On the other hand take the case of forging a Van Gogh. Both appropriate intellectual property. One does so with perfect legitimacy, the other thereby commits the crime of fraud. Since you seem unable to cite a reference of Lessig's lauding of appropriation, perhaps you can explain in which sense you mean the term?
Unlike Lessig, I do in fact "laud the appropriation of intellectual property". IP as we know it is not only a fiction of the law, but a fiction who's time has passed. IP law as we know it might arguably have been apt in the Gutenberg era, but in a free market when supply approaches the azimuth price seeks the nadir, and current IP does little more than create the illusion of scarcity in order to fraudulently bolster incomes of entities that cannot adapt to the realities of the day, in which an ever growing pool of content creators can supply, replicate, and distribute their works almost without limit.
Finally, there's one more cheat in your post, and that's the casual "kidding on the square" tone, which I can only interpret as a kind of preparatory stance of one accustomed to relying on #27 of Schopenhauer's list, "Anger Indicates a Weak Point". Based on this one sample it seems the only real strength of at least one "professional" content creator is use of distracting irrelevancies and illegitimate forms of argumentation. It's a pity then that the tools to discredit such methods are so easily in the reach of the amateurs.
References:
Arthur Schopenhauer
Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten - The Art Of Controversy
http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/
Postulate What Has To Be Proved
http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/erist06.htm
The Homonymy
http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/erist02.htm
Anger Indicates a Weak Point
http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/erist27.htm
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