ASCII by Jason Scott: Why the BBS Documentary is Creative Commons

I've been hemming and hawing about doing this entry, going over how to approach it in my mind, starting and restarting what statements to put in it, what comments to make, and so on. I get like this about some entries and this one is a pretty important one, so realize what went into it.

The BBS Documentary has been released under a Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike 2.0 license. The "Creative Commons" movement means different things to different people, so of course you should check their website to get the full story on this, but I'm going to paraphrase it for my needs.

Creative Commons is a group of rock and roll lawyers who basically looked at the currently draconian copyright law and decided to back-hack in an alternative copyright that would allow various uses of content and material in a way that was clear and distinct for all parties. Whereas current copyright law in the United States basically says that if a child touches a CD without paying for it ahead of time, that child may be shot in the head.... creative commons says that the kid can go and play with the CD and make strange sounds with its content or add some beats or sample it or whatever, depending on the license. Oh, and you can't shoot the child in the head.