Brett sent me an article by Florian Cramer who has written a fabulous (and long) essay on copyright and the various "free" licenses that surround it. If you are at all interested in the subject it's well worth a read (whether you agree or not).
Personally I think the very last paragraph is a pretty succinct summary, but then I'm known to be fairly opinionated on the subject:
Copyright, having turned from a regulation into a subsidy of publishing industries, is the 21st century equivalent of drug legislation. Everyone knows that it is obsolete, dysfunctional, and depriving people of their rights; absurd wars are foughts in its name. The simple fix is to abolish it.
And the always sharp tongued Mark Pilgrim is never without his own comments:
I remember when I first read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, and I felt a wave of euphoria and optimism about the coming Free Culture Revolution. Then I looked at the book's license: yup, you guessed it, CC-BY-NC. Sigh. "The fish rots from the head," etc. We may someday get that revolution he promised, but it won't be led by a bunch of lawyers and pragmatists."