I got my hands on an advance copy of Larry Lessig’s forthcoming book, Remix, today. I was a little surprised to read the following on its copyright page:
Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2008
All rights reserved
And then, a little further down:
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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 copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
That seemed a little incongruous for a book on how not all copying is piracy, how important remixing is to our culture, and how “this war on our kids has got to stop.” It’s an odd bit of what Lessig would call “read-only” language to start a book that celebrates “read-write” culture. I was curious, so I flipped through the book’s front and back matter, and to my surprise, I couldn’t find any mention of a Creative Commons license. Again, odd for a man who sits on its board of directors and whose other four books are under CC licenses.
So, um, Larry, you’re going to put Remix online under a CC license, right? And the replacement of the CC license with a draconian copyright notice was a mistake, right? One that’ll be corrected in subsequent printings, right? Right?
UPDATE 2008-09-28: Larry himself (or an imitator who knows his email address) replies. Sounds like my worries were premature.