This exchange involving Phil Ringalda, Hylton Jolliffe, Donna Wentworth and the Corante Terms of Use page is an entertaining and elegant example of noting, fixing and moving right along. Donna's post also reminded me, by pointing to Shelley Powers (please see her post here and its links, trackbacks and comments), that there's a need/demand for an IP blawger to write an article or a post with a "Licensing 101" theme aimed at Web material in general and weblogs in particular. An overview of the relative risks and benefits of front-end licensing would go a long way toward helping people evaluate whether Creative Commons or one of its precursor "just add water" solutions (e.g., those rounded up once upon a time by our friends at Berkman) would work for them, whether they might wish to consult with an actual lawyer about their licensing concerns (hopefully not as painful as it sounds), or perhaps, for them, "licensing-schmeisensing, long live the circle-c ©." I'd do it, but I just have too much on my plate in the immediate near term. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to write a topical piece that any number of, y'know, actual publishers might be interested in, or to do what your blog does so well and forego the middle-person. (Need a research starting point? Try Aaron Swartz's License Haiku...actually, here are a couple of more serious links that just sort of highlight the need for a current and focused exploration of the topic. If you know of or have the time to track down other potentially pertinent analyses, now would be a good time to LazyBlawg them.) This also gives me a chance to say "hey!" to Rick Klau's friend Eric Heels (who recently has drunk the weblog Kool-Aid and is wondering what happens next; this is what happens next), and note that his newly bloggified and eye-catchingly-domained site ("beaver law" can be really intriguing) has an article about copyright and self-publishing: How to Write, Copyright and Publish Your Own Book. However, the article is oriented toward, as titled, a book and not a myriad of Web-based material, and it doesn't tackle the uses, benefits and/or potential drawbacks of front-end licensing. O magic LazyBlawg, you are hereby invok-ed.