[FC-discuss] Free Software and Free Culture

[Janet Hawtin]

On 5/30/07, Chris Morris <cm195902 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, I personally feel free software is very important to free
> culture. Without free software can any culture on networks/computers
> be free from DRM? GIven the current state we find ourselves, how can
> free culture exist without free software?

<ianal)

Lessig had a good diagram describing the way content travels through a
file format, application, network routing, printer, etc in its journey
from person to person.
The message being that if for any of those phases of the journey do
not have an open option the content becomes embedded in a closed
phase.

(It features in this talk
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7661663613180520595)

My enterpretation is that if that closed phase involves a DRM/TPM
component then any technology which interfaces with the closed phase
is jeapordised because the TPM entity can deem interfacing
technologies infringe. ie The closed-ness can work its way around the
space criminalising things which interface with it or requiring
interfacing technologies to comply with its own model.

Of course content locked inside DRM/TPM is hostage as it is a felony
to develop ways to make the content open even if it is your own
content. Even for fair use or within a CC licence of the person who
wrote the content because the TPM is in between.

</ianal>

> On a slightly different topic, I think free software is also important
> as an example. One of the problems FC faces is people thinking this is
> nothing but Utopian dreams. To paraphrase Eben Moglen, the problems
> with pointing to Utopian is there is nothing there. However, with free
> software, we finally have an example of what we can achieve; we have
> somewhere we can point to. Of course, music and software are
> different, but free software is an example of a "system" where the
> freedom of users and producers is the central focus.
>
> Chris

I saw a lovely quote yesterday
 "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay
I think this is the challenge.

We do have aspects of our culture which did not rely on restriction
They are all imho becoming more prone to thinking of ideas as property.
Even in the education sector where I was told by a commenter on Lessig's blog
that there are schools in the US where kids are required to sign an NDA
that they will not infringe the school's copyright by tutoring others. (!!)

imho
We have to step back from the ownership of the one to look at the
function of information and ideas and if we take those ideas as the
primary principle, what business models can we make around innovation
which is not restriction based.
We can document people who are winning commercially AND sharing.
We need to generate experiments and dialogue which explore what we might
be able to do with free culture outside of a reliance on property oriented law.
Copyright proponents are probably aware enough these days that
copyright is becoming a problem. I feel they are likely to be
supportive of CC licensing because it makes the overall model more
feasible. It is also good as a first step to understanding information
and creation beyond the 'I'. Perhaps this is the scope of free culture
too, but perhaps it isn't.
Perhaps there is an opportunity to craft new ways of making community
AND money with ideas, culture AND sharing.
/imho

How has the 12 bar blues underpinned modern music.
What would music look like now if those structures were restricted?
Can we promote genres of music which are founded on an expectation of
remix and freedom. How has mashing and remixing generated value and
energy around ideas and the people who contribute them and use them.

How can we rediscover good ways we have done it previously and
engineer new ways of using our new distributed spaces. Would be great
to think that what is now does not need to define what will ever be.

Janet