Tim Wu, a la Tolkien, seeing its disturbing absence from the history books, has embarked upon the creation of a new mythology of authorial rights:

On Copyright’s Authorship Policy

Now, at last, Creative Commons has some academic credentials.

However, to conclude that enabling the proto king author to wield their copyright has ushered in a new age of cultural freedom is disingenuous.

It is not the fact that the author has the gift of restoring the public’s liberty that is remarkable or the reason why free software has taken off, it is the fact that the public has reclaimed its liberty!

Well done to the enlightened authors who do this (in their hurry to avoid attacking their audience), but it is a delusion on a par with thinking it is the trees that make the wind to think that we need to suspend the public’s liberty precisely in order to enable the king author to restore it back to them.

Copyright is a fell sword intended for mightier creatures than mere mortals. To cast letter knives from the same metal that mere scribes may brandish mocks the author’s true impotence.

The power comes not from the author, but the law of the people. It is only with the people’s consent that the author may symbolically pull the one true sword from the stone and serve their will.

Far more honest to record that the Roman empire’s sword of copyright has shattered and its shards lay dull with all power gone, fit only as symbols of a darker age.

And the law of the people came racing back, like the tide over flat sands.