Der Blog

Mark Pilgrim's recent rants about Creative Commons noncommercial licenses inspired me to read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, which is linked from said rant.

I found an HTML e-book version of it, which is apparently more or less identical to the version published in book form. Right down to the copyright notices. Yup, it even says "Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2004. All rights reserved." It is of course his copyright, but the second part is incorrect, because the book is licensed under CC-BY-NC, which allows noncommercial distribution provided you give the author credit. So his right to restrict distribution is not entirely reserved. It gives the other boilerplate copyright messages as well: "no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ... or transmitted ... without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book" (of course the CC license constitutes permission, so this clause has little effect and is rather misleading) and most laughable:

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

I've not read the book yet, but I gather it criticises the lack of creativity caused by the current draconian copyright regime and talks about alternatives, including CC. So the fact that it has a copyright notice of this sort strikes me as very, very bizarre.