©apped

Ars Technica reports that Captain Copyright, about whom I previously posted, is no more. The Captain was "killed by the sinister forces of Dr. Controversy" and his creators, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Authority:

In a notice on the Captain Copyright web site, the CCLA acknowledged the "criticisms the site had received." It turns out that the general public was skeptical that the best way for a child to spend school time was with an accurate but unbalanced curriculum written and promoted by a private industry group. As we noted in the original writeup on the Captain, the material looked generally correct, but it lacked any meaningful discussion of "fair dealing," the public domain, and other consumer rights.

Responding to those criticisms, the CCLA took the site offline last August and "commissioned someone with expertise on the creation of educational materials to prepare new lessons on the Creative Commons, fair dealing and the public domain." They then took the material to an advisory panel of teachers and experts for review, then prepared them for in-class testing by teachers.

. . . .

Apparently, creating the Captain was simple enough when only the CCLA was involved and their superhero was pushing the industry line. Once the group started incorporating other legitimate perspectives on copyright, it found out quickly that plenty of organizations did not agree with the CCLA about a lot of basic things. These groups were never going to be satisfied with material produced by the CCLA, no matter how independent the consultant they hired.