Creative Commons says it is not a patch deferring copyright reform; Obama criticizes "bloggers" and professional activists for profiting from Congressional disarray

Creative Commons has a policy statement and discussion by Timothy Vollmer, Oct.16, 2013, with basic link here. Creative Commons suggests that the success of CC in reducing legal costs in sharing intellectual property in areas where interests are largely educational and less driven by profit, does not obviate the need for focused copyright reform.  Without reform, legislators are tempted to overact to claims of infringement (as with the attempts to pass SOPA and PIPA).  And large corporate content owners tend to use overreaching methods to discourage piracy, and sometimes fail to provide content in innovative formats that consumers prefer.  For example, studios are often very slow to make major films available by DVD or for legal (with rental or purchase) Internet streaming.

  

Today, President Obama chided Congress for not doing its job, and particularly for being overly influenced by lobbyists, professional activists who profit from disorder, and even “bloggers”.  I suppose he could have been referring to the extreme positions taken in some of the right-wing blogs, as well as “disinformation” about the default deniers (in the debt ceiling debate).  I even self-published some analysis showing that it was very unlikely that a default would occur for several weeks.  I tweeted a lot of people, maybe a few of whom don’t talk to one another.  I was only trying to see a settlement.  There was a risk, however slight mathematically or unlikely, or a real catastrophe.   Out of “enlightened” self-interest,  I didn’t want to run that risk in my own retirement situation, even if I had not been directly affected yet.