In Montana, if you don't want cattle in your garden, you must fence them out. It is not the stockman's responsibility to build a fence to keep them on the open range.

Roughtype discusses the Internet equivalent, with links -- what happens when material is available for a fee, but is also readily accessible by any browser? If someone links to it, must a takedown notice be honored? And if yoiu just download it, have you swiped it?

My inclination is to say that the ethic of the Internet, as it has devleoped in practice, is that if you don't want your material taken freely then you must protect it -- build a fence around your yard, in Montana parlance.

But riddle me this: What about a Creative Commons license? If such material is made freely available, and I download it, should I be bound by an authorial injunction that I not incorporate it into a commercial work? If your answer is "yes," then why should that term be given effect, but not a term that says "do not download this unless you send me $2.00"?

If one thinks that unfenced commercial work is in all essentials now in the public domain, shouldn't the same principle be applied to the Creative Commons? After all, while the CC is intended to reduce transaction costs, as I noted only yesterday, there are still several different licenses and layers of complexity; why should these be imposed on users unless the creator is willing to be serious enough about it to fence in the work and require agreement? And, of course, then how does this affect further dissemination?

Maybe one of my colleagues will tell me what to think.