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the buzz is that BzzAgent has partnered with Creative Commons

by: Dabitch, May 1 2005 - 9:42pm
Dabitch's picture
By Dabitch on May 1, 2005 - 21:42

As posted on Metafilter, the community blog created by Creative Commons Creative Director, the news is that creative commons has decided to partner with BzzAgent. Some aren't too happy about this match made in marketing heaven, Suw Charman at Corante sums up why nicely;

But for Creative Commons to start using BzzAgents is, not to put too fine a point on it, a betrayal of the work done by grassroots activists who are genuinely concerned about the state of copyright today. The people who have been working hard on promoting CC, who are contributing CC material to the ever growing commons, who are writing about copyright reform, putting together seminars and events, these are CC's 'buzz agents', and they do all this work for free, because they believe on a fundamental level that it is important.

So will this strange partnership survive? Who nows when the CC creative director said that : "I wasn't part of any of the discussions so I never did any due diligence on them. If I knew it was them I would have steered us clear."
The one who has the best reputation - buzz if you will - and thus the most to loose on this teamup is the Creative Commons. It looks like BzzAgent is the party to gain the most from this marriage.

Update: Lessig Blog: Bzzzz: seeking advice is asking for comments, and getting quite a few from people who dislike the idea.

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Dabitch's picture

Dave Balter founder of BzzAgents, calls Suw and other Bloggers in general, liars.

Which brings me to point two. Bloggers are destroying their own medium.

How? By being more critics and pundits than journalists. The problem is that there are no editors and no fact checkers, so plenty of what you read on blogs is just plain untrue. Check out Suw Charman's Corante post on BzzAgent's Partnership with Creative Commons, where she misstates nearly a dozen facts. And much of what she says is also pulled from other blogs. Guess what? Her informants are providing false information, too. A vicious cycle of lies.

Suw responds here:

I don't have 'informants', as Dave puts it, and I'd like to see a simple, bulletpoint list of my 12 'misstated facts'. I'm also not sure where this 'vicious cycle of lies' comes from either, so I'd like to see that elaborated.

I am not sure why Dave thinks that word of mouth interactions are somehow inherently more truthful than any other sort of interaction, particularly when he's encouraging people to alter the nature of their word of mouth interactions in order to earn rewards. Blogs are a non-ephemeral medium, and bloggers can be held to account in public for what they write. How this makes blogs less truthful than any other medium I am not sure.

Robbotman's picture

Perhaps CC are showing their true colors? Copyright contains all possible permutations in dealing with creative work, including null or gratis licensing so there really isn't a need for a "branded" (privately owned?) "system" unless you'd rather confuse matters than teach people how the current rights actually work. If I see one more "blog" proudly wearing the CC license while displaying AP photographs that they clearly have no right to reproduce, I'll bang my head against the keyboard. Who is going to benefit from this "branded" version of copyright? Will the logo cost money to display in the future? What is the idea behind working so hard to brand something that already existed? So that they can own it?

James Trickery's picture

Why anyone would want to hire a reputation whoring company, who can't handle their own reputation, is beyond me.

caffeinegoddess's picture

Wow. What a messy mess!

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