By now most people in the blogosphere have heard about Bill Gates's statement, in response to a question on whether intellectual property rights need to be reformed, that "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
A lot of people have been up-in-arms about the characterisation of groups like the Creative Commons folk as communists, but even if Bill was talking about Creative Commons, many of the criticisms I've read seem to miss the main point.
The key point to make, in the context of Creative Commons, is that CC isn't about legal reform—it's about helping creators to convey their licensing intentions within current copyright laws.
Yes I think current copyright terms are stupid, but your works don't have to be subject to them if you don't want. As a creator of the work, you have the control.
That is what was stupid about Michael Moore being okay about illegal copies of Fahrenheit 9/11 before the election. If he was the copyright holder, and he wanted it to be freely distributable for non-commercial purposes, he could have made the film available under a CC-like license. It's ridiculous to reserve all rights (or assign them to an entity that does) and then complain that people should be allowed to copy the work.
If Bill Gates was talking about Creative Commons, then his comment was a straw man. CC is about helping creators to realise the flexibility they have. To give them choices. Even expand the incentives. And there are great market opportunities for publishers, music distributors, etc who want to work with this flexibility too. Artist doesn't like the deal from the label? Go somewhere else like Magnatune. Consumer doesn't like the redistribution terms of the song? Don't buy it.
Some people find incentive in money, others in fame, others in making a lasting contribution. As long as people are free to pursue any or all of those paths, that sounds pretty good to me. If someone truly was wanting to get rid of incentives (of any kind), then I'd have a problem. In as much as Bill was saying that, then I agree with him.
UPDATE (2005-01-10): See Glen Otis Brown's post on the Creative Commons blog. Notice he characterises CC as a "voluntary, market-based approach to copyright". Just that one phrase pretty much makes the point this entire blog entry was trying to. And it pretty neatly sums up why I'm a fan of CC.