A misunderstanding of Creative Commons

Joe Gratz, a recent law school graduate has done a thorough job of disecting John Dvorak's opinion of the Creative Commons.

From Dvorak's opening paragraph:

"Dubbed the Creative Commons this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous "fair use" provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community"

And so Gratz's analysis begins:

"If we cut through the prose here, we find that Dvorak worries that Creative Commons licensing might limit users’ fair use rights. This is a misunderstanding of the license. The very first substantive paragraph of every Creative Commons license says, “Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.” How any license that so prominently and so explicitly preserves users’ fair use rights could pose a threat to those rights is difficult to imagine."

The phrase 'Doh!' comes to mind...