If It’s All About Respect, Why Do They Look So Foolish?
August 25, 2007
So — what should Nixon Peabody have done when its embarrassing firm non-theme song made its inevitable way onto the Web? (And into the atmosphere of countless homes and offices, as its hapless victims hum and mutter it against their will and better judgment?)
If they'd have asked me (or perhaps 95% of the over 1,000 people who have voted in the Volokh Conspiracy poll), I'd have told them the last thing they should be doing is invoking the DMCA. Instead I'd have recommended:
- applying an appropriately liberal Creative Commons license,
- holding a mashup contest, and
- showcasing the winner and the top 9 runners up on the firm's home page.
Would make for more congenial search results and Wikipedia copy, at any rate. (But then again, at least the firm has a Wikipedia entry.)

