I am somewhat late to comment on this and this post by John Palfrey.
Palfrey discussed the case of Dave Winer's copyright in his blog. Someone is mirroring that blog against the authors will and highlighting changes to it.
Dave Winer doesn't like this. Why? He wants to reserve the right to change his mind, to delete things he wrote earlier. But he can't take anything down for good if people are mirroring his site. And that fact has a chilling effect on his writing.
In Palfrey's opinion, the default copyright situation would prevent mirroring against the author's will. I agree with that. Discussing individual entries might be fair use. Wholesale mirroring goes too far.
And I would like to comment on what happens if people follow Palfrey's suggestion of incorporating Creative Commons licenses in their RSS feeds.
In that case, the author loses the right to oppose any mirroring. So he can't take down anything for good any more if he changes his mind.
On the other hand, if an author has as many readers as Dave Winer, probably many of them remember what he wrote in the first place, even if he edits it later on. Especially if it was something controversial.
So while the Right to Change Your Mind disappears with the use of a Creative Commons license, and people should be aware of that fact when they choose that license, it's probably not ever so big a deal.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at July 23, 2003 10:21 PM | TrackBack