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The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content,[1][2] otherwise known as open content.[3][4][5] They encourage creators to create such content by using permissive and share-alike licensing, like that used on Wikipedia. Additionally, some free culture advocates support piracy.[6]
The movement objects to what it considers over-restrictive copyright laws. Many members of the movement argue that over-restrictive laws hinder creativity[7] and create a "permission culture", which they worry will shrink the public domain[8] and fair use.[citation needed] They engage in political activism, mostly advocating for specific limits on copyright.[8]
The free-culture movement, with its ethos of free exchange of ideas, is aligned with the free and open-source-software movement, as well as other movements and philosophies such as open access (OA), the remix culture, the hacker culture, the access to knowledge movement, the copyleft movement and the public domain movement.
History
[edit]Precursors
[edit]In the late 1960s, Stewart Brand founded the Whole Earth Catalog and argued that technology could be liberating rather than oppressing.[9] He coined the slogan "Information wants to be free" in 1984[10] to advocate against limiting access to information by governmental control, preventing a public domain of information.[11]
Background of the formation of the free-culture movement
[edit]In 1998, the United States Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which President Clinton signed into law. The legislation extended copyright protections for twenty additional years, resulting in a total guaranteed copyright term of seventy years after a creator's death. The bill was heavily lobbied by music and film corporations like Disney, and dubbed as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Lawrence Lessig claims copyright is an obstacle to cultural production, knowledge sharing and technological innovation, and that private interests – as opposed to public good – determine law.[12] He travelled the country in 1998, giving as many as a hundred speeches a year at college campuses, and sparked the movement. It led to the foundation of the first chapter of the Students for Free Culture at Swarthmore College.
In 1999, Lessig challenged the Bono Act, taking the case to the US Supreme Court. Despite his firm belief in victory, citing the Constitution's plain language about "limited" copyright terms, Lessig only gained two dissenting votes: from Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens.
Foundation of the Creative Commons
[edit]In 2001, Lessig initiated Creative Commons, an alternative "some rights reserved" licensing system to the default "all rights reserved" copyright system. Lessig focuses on a fair balance between the interest of the public to use and participate into released creative works and the need of protection for a creator's work, which still enables a "read-write" remix culture.[7]
The term "free culture" was originally used since 2003 during the World Summit on Information Society[13] to present the first free license for artistic creation at large, initiated by the Copyleft attitude team in France since 2001 (named free art license). It was then developed in Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture in 2004.[14]
In August 2003 the Open Content Project, a 1998 Creative Commons precursor by David A. Wiley, announced the Creative Commons as successor project and Wiley joined as director.[15][16]
"Definition of Free Cultural Works"
[edit]In 2005/2006 within the free-culture movement, Creative Commons was criticized by Erik M?ller[17] and Benjamin Mako Hill for lacking minimum standards for freedom.[18] Following this, the "Definition of Free Cultural Works" was created as collaborative work of many, including Erik M?ller, Lawrence Lessig, Benjamin Mako Hill and Richard Stallman.[19] In February 2008, several Creative Commons licenses were "approved for free cultural works", namely the CC BY and CC BY-SA (later also the CC0).[20] Creative Commons licenses with restrictions on commercial use or derivative works were not approved.
In October 2014, the Open Knowledge Foundation described their definition of "open", for open content and open knowledge, as synonymous to the definition of "free" in the "Definition of Free Cultural Works", noting that both are rooted in the Open Source Definition and Free Software Definition.[21] Therefore, the same three creative commons licenses are recommended for open content and free content, CC BY, CC BY-SA, and CC0.[22][23][24] The Open Knowledge foundation additionally defined three specialized licenses for data and databases, previously unavailable: the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL), the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) and the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).
Organizations
[edit]
The organization commonly associated with free culture is Creative Commons (CC), founded by Lawrence Lessig. CC promotes sharing creative works and diffusing ideas to produce cultural vibrance, scientific progress and business innovation.
QuestionCopyright.org is another organization whose stated mission is "to highlight the economic, artistic, and social harm caused by distribution monopolies, and to demonstrate how freedom-based distribution is better for artists and audiences."[25]
QuestionCopyright may be best known for its association with artist Nina Paley, whose multi-award-winning feature length animation Sita Sings The Blues has been held up as an extraordinarily successful[26] example of free distribution under the aegis of the "Sita Distribution Project".[27] The web site of the organization has a number of resources, publications, and other references related to various copyright, patent, and trademark issues.
The student organization Students for Free Culture is sometimes confusingly called "the Free Culture Movement", but that is not its official name. The organization is a subset of the greater movement. The first chapter was founded in 1998 at Swarthmore College, and by 2008, the organization had 26 chapters.[28]
The free-culture movement takes the ideals of the free and open-source software movement and extends them from the field of software to all cultural and creative works. Early in Creative Commons' life, Richard Stallman (the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the free software movement) supported the organization. He withdrew his support due to the introduction of several licenses including the developing nations (retired in 2007)[29] and sampling licenses.[30] Stallman later restored some support when Creative Commons retired those licenses.
The free music movement, a subset of the free-culture movement, started out just as the Web rose in popularity with the Free Music Philosophy[31] by Ram Samudrala in early 1994. It was also based on the idea of free software by Richard Stallman and coincided with nascent open art and open information movements (referred to here as collectively as the "free-culture movement"). The Free Music Philosophy used a three-pronged approach to voluntarily encourage the spread of unrestricted copying, based on the fact that copies of recordings and compositions could be made and distributed with complete accuracy and ease via the Internet. The subsequent free music movement was reported on by diverse media outlets including Billboard,[32] Forbes,[33] Levi's Original Music Magazine,[34] The Free Radical,[35] Wired[36][37] and The New York Times.[38] Along with the explosion of the Web driven by open source software and Linux, the rise of P2P and lossy compression, and despite the efforts of the music industry, free music became largely a reality in the early 21st century.[39] Organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons with free information champions like Lawrence Lessig were devising numerous licenses that offered different flavors of copyright and copyleft. The question was no longer why and how music should be free, but rather how creativity would flourish while musicians developed models to generate revenue in the Internet era.[40][41][42]
Reception
[edit]Skepticism from Richard Stallman
[edit]Initially, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman did not see the importance of free works beyond software.[43] For instance for manuals and books Stallman stated in the 1990s:
As a general rule, I don't believe that it is essential for people to have permission to modify all sorts of articles and books. The issues for writings are not necessarily the same as those for software. For example, I don't think you or I are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our views.
Similarly, in 1999 Stallman said that he sees "no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software".[44] Other authors, such as Joshua Pearce, have argued that there is an ethical imperative for open-source hardware, specifically with respect to open-source-appropriate technology for sustainable development.[45]
Later, Stallman changed his position slightly and advocated for free sharing of information in 2009.[46] But, in 2011 Stallman commented on the Megaupload founder's arrest, "I think all works meant for practical uses must be free, but that does not apply to music, since music is meant for appreciation, not for practical use."[47] In a follow-up Stallman differentiated three classes: works of practical use should be free, works representing points of view should be shareable but not changeable and works of art or entertainment should be copyrighted (but only for 10 years).[48] In an essay in 2012 Stallman argued that video games as software should be free but not their artwork.[49] In 2015 Stallman advocated for free hardware designs.[50]
Copyright proponents
[edit]Vocal criticism against the free-culture movement comes from copyright proponents.
Prominent technologist and musician Jaron Lanier discusses this perspective of free culture in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget. Lanier's concerns include the depersonalization of crowd-sourced anonymous media (such as Wikipedia) and the economic dignity of middle-class creative artists.
Andrew Keen, a critic of Web 2.0, criticizes some of the free culture ideas in his book, Cult of the Amateur, describing Lessig as an "intellectual property communist".[51]
The decline of the news media industry's market share is blamed on free culture but scholars like Clay Shirky claim that the market itself, not free culture, is what is killing the journalism industry.[14]
The free art movement is distinct from the free culture movement as the artist retains full copyright for the work. The free art movement is the practice of artists leaving art in public places for the public to remove and keep. The artwork is usually tagged with a notice stating it is free art, and either with the artist's name or left anonymously. The movement was reinvigorated by British street art practitioner My Dog Sighs coining the term "Free Art Fridays".[52] Clues to the location of artworks are sometimes left on social media to combine treasure hunting with art.[53]
See also
[edit]- 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
- Access to knowledge movement
- Anti-copyright notice
- Commodification
- Commons-based peer production
- Copyleft
- Copyright abolition
- Criticism of copyright
- Criticism of intellectual property
- Culture vs. Copyright
- Cypherpunk
- Free content
- Free education
- Freedom of information
- Free software
- Information wants to be free
- Internet freedom
- Open content
- Open-design movement
- Open educational resources
- Open-source architecture
- Open-source model
- Open-source movement
- Patentleft
- Pirate Party
- Remix culture
- Science 2.0
- Sharing economy
- The Virtual Revolution
References
[edit]- ^ "What does a free culture look like?". Students of Free culture. Archived from the original on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ "What is free culture?". Students of Free culture. Archived from the original on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ The Alternative Media Handbook by Kate Coyer, Tony Dowmunt, Alan Fountain
- ^ Open Access: What You Need to Know Now by Walt Crawford
- ^ Open Content - A Practical Guide to Using Creative Commons Licences by Wikimedia Deutschland by Till Kreutzer (2014)
- ^ Fogel, Karl. ""Piracy Is Not Theft" graphic by Patri Friedman". Question Copyright. Retrieved 19 June 2025.
- ^ a b Larry Lessig (2025-08-14). "Larry Lessig says the law is strangling creativity". ted.com. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ a b Robert S. Boynton: The Tyranny of Copyright? Archived 2025-08-14 at the Wayback Machine The New York Times, January 25, 2004
- ^ Baker, Ronald J (2025-08-14), Mind over matter: why intellectual capital is the chief source of wealth, John Wiley & Sons, p. 80, ISBN 9780470198810.
- ^ "Edge 338", Edge, no. 338, archived from the original on 2025-08-14, retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ Wagner, R Polk, Information wants to be free: intellectual property and the mythologies of control (PDF), University of Pennsylvania, archived from the original (PDF essay) on 2025-08-14, retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ Lessig, Lawrence (2004). Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin. p. 368. ISBN 9781101200841. Retrieved March 15, 2014.
- ^ WSIS (2001). "PCT WORKING GROUP EVENT" Archived 2025-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Quart, Alissa (2009). "Expensive Gifts", Columbia Journalism Review, 48(2).
- ^ David A. Wiley (30 June 2003). "OpenContent is officially closed. And that's just fine". opencontent.org. Archived from the original on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
I'm closing OpenContent because I think Creative Commons is doing a better job of providing licensing options which will stand up in court.
- ^ Creative Commons Welcomes David Wiley as Educational Use License Project Lead by matt on creativecommons.org (June 23rd, 2003)
- ^ Erik Moeller (2006). "The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License" (PDF). Open Source Jahrbuch.
- ^ Benjamin Mako Hill (June 29, 2005). "Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement". Mako.cc. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ Definition of Free Cultural Works. Freedomdefined.org (2025-08-14). Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ "Approved for Free Cultural Works". 2025-08-14.
- ^ Open Definition 2.1 on opendefinition.org
- ^ licenses on opendefinition.com
- ^ Creative Commons 4.0 BY and BY-SA licenses approved conformant with the Open Definition by Timothy Vollmer on creativecommons.org (December 27th, 2013)
- ^ Open Definition 2.0 released by Timothy Vollmer on creativecommons.org (October 7th, 2014)
- ^ A Clearinghouse For New Ideas About Copyright. QuestionCopyright.org. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Nina Paley at HOPE 2010. YouTube. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ The Sita Sings the Blues Distribution Project Archived 2025-08-14 at the Wayback Machine. QuestionCopyright.org (2025-08-14). Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Hayes, Christopher (2009). "Mr. Lessig Goes to Washington" Archived 2025-08-14 at the Wayback Machine, The Nation, June 16, 2008
- ^ "Retiring standalone DevNations and one Sampling license". Creative Commons. 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ interview for LinuxP2P (6 February 2006)
- ^ Samudrala, Ram (1994). "The Free Music Philosophy". Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 18 July 1998. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
- ^ Penenberg A. Habias copyrightus. "Forbes", July 11 1997. Forbes.com. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Durbach D. "Short fall to freedom: The free music insurgency". Levi's Original Music Magazine, November 19, 2008. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Ballin M. Unfair Use. "The Free Radical" 47, 2001. Freeradical.co.nz. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Oakes C. Recording industry goes to war against web sites. Wired, June 10 1997. Wired.com. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Stutz M. They (used to) write the songs. Wired, June 12 1998. Freerockload.ucoz.com. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Napoli L. Fans of MP3 forced the issue. "The New York Times", December 16 1998. Nytimes.com. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Alternate Kinds of Freedom by Troels Just. Troelsjust.dk. Archived on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Schulman BM. The song heard 'round the world: The copyright implications of MP3s and the future of digital music. "Harvard Journal of Law and Technology" 12: 3, 1999. Archived 2025-08-14 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) . Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Samudrala R. The future of music. 1997. Ram.org. Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Story of a Revolution: Napster & the Music Industry. "MusicDish", 2000. (PDF) . Retrieved on 2025-08-14.
- ^ Brett Watson (2025-08-14). "Philosophies of Free Software and Intellectual Property". Retrieved 2025-08-14.
Is Software special? [...] So restricting modification is not necessarily evil when it comes to "articles and books"? Or does he just mean that we aren't obliged to let others misrepresent us? Alas, no mention of restricting verbatim duplication. Even Stallman's story on "The Right to Read" does not address the issue directly, despite being about IPR issues other than software. It extrapolates a dystopian future from our current position and acts as a warning about current trends, but offers no comment on the status quo. [...] There is a striking lack of discussion from the usual leaders with regards to the application of copyright in areas other than software. Raymond is mute, and Stallman mumbles. They both seem to view software as a special case: Raymond tacitly, and Stallman explicitly.
- ^ Richard Stallman -- On "Free Hardware" on linuxtoday.com "I see no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software." (Jun 22, 1999)
- ^ Pearce, Joshua M. (2012). "The case for open source appropriate technology". Environment, Development and Sustainability. 14 (3): 425–431. Bibcode:2012EDSus..14..425P. doi:10.1007/s10668-012-9337-9.
- ^ Stallman, Richard (2009). "Ending the War on Sharing".
- ^ Boot up: Google and Facebook work on antiphishing tool, Richard Stallman on MegaUpload arrests, and more on The Guardian (January 30, 2012)
- ^ Correcting The Guardian's paraphrase by Richard Stallman (Jan 22, 2012)
- ^ Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad? on fsf.org by Richard Stallman "Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users. (Game art is a different issue, because it isn't software." (May 31, 2012)
- ^ Hardware Designs Should Be Free. Here's How to Do It by Richard Stallman on wired.com (03.18.2015)
- ^ Keen, Andrew (May 16, 2006). Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think. The Weekly Standard
- ^ "Free Art Friday: A Global Art Movement Everyone Can Appreciate". Mic. 21 March 2013. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
- ^ Roberts @donnovan_jade, Holly (7 April 2016). "Month-long art scavenger hunt, Free Art Movement, comes to Classic City". The Red and Black. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
External links
[edit]
- Resources
- Berry, David M. and Giles Moss. 2006. The Politics of the Libre Commons. First Monday. Volume 11 (September)
- Pasquinelli, Matteo. "The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage"[permanent dead link]; now in Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008.
- Videoblog: Free Culture, Free Software, Free Infrastructures! Openness and Freedom in every Layer of the Network (Interviews with Kloschi (Freifunk), Kurt Jansson (Wikimedia), Jürgen Neumann (Freifunk), Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (United Nations University), Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons) and Allison and Benoit (Montréal Wireless))