[FC-discuss] Words, phrases, and the coining thereof

[William Norton]

Actually I would say, in general, "Free Culture" is not a very useful term.
It's useful perhaps for those who are aware of Lessig or the general free
culture movement, but otherwise "free culture" conveys little information to
the listener.  Our chapter at UNL questioned whether to even use the Free
Culture name because we were afraid it would be too confusing.

Open Access/Freedom of Information seem to be useful terms.

Remix creativity/Read-Write society are useful to the initiated but not to
the uninitiated.

Free Culture only really seems useful once people understand all these other
terms.

Cheers,
William Norton
President, Free Culture @ UNL


On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:46 PM, Matthew J. Agnello <matt.agnello at gmail.com>
wrote:

>  When I interviewed librarians at ALA, none of them knew what the "free
> culture movement" was. They understood the term "intellectual freedom on the
> Internet" or "freedom of information" much more clearly, and when I
> clarified to mean remix culture and copyright, they got that immediately,
> although they had mixed feelings about it.
>
> They tended to group freedom of information and open access together, and
> they believed it's important to know information and have access to it but
> felt less concerned about controlling or re-using it in artistic ways.
> Contrast that to when I visited the Do It Yourself video summit. At DIY,
> they immediately understood the term "free culture," because I was talking
> to people who did political remixes regularly.
>
> Now, to qualify, people from CC and the EFF were at DIY, so the people in
> the audience were more likely to understand the terminology. ALA was not as
> familiar with those issues. In my opinion, the views of both groups depended
> heavily on their perspectives relative to information/culture. The
> librarians looked at information as something to collect and analyze but not
> change. The artists and remixers (and academics) looked at information as
> something to manipulate. Their interests affected their views of what
> freedoms were most important. Now that's an oversimplification, and an
> individual's views are much more complex. But the important point is
> that those phrases will have different meanings among different groups as
> well as different meanings unto themselves.
>
> Best,
> // Matt
>
>
> ----------
> *Matt Agnello*
> http://www.hungryfilmmaker.com
> < matt.agnello at gmail.com >
>
>   On Feb 28, 2008, at 6:03 PM, Nelson Pavlosky wrote:
>
>  * Free Culture
> * Access to Knowledge
> * Freedom of Information
> * Freedom of Expression
>
> Knowledge/information/culture.  Freedom/liberty.  Is there a term we
> could use that would encompass all of these concepts at once?  I believe
> that Students for Free Culture would tend to support all of the above
> concepts, but each of those four phrases has different connotations and
> none of them truly include all of the others.
>
> "Free Culture" may come the closest simply because we are part of the
> free culture movement and we are vaguely supportive of all of the above,
> but "free culture" does have connotations of caring about e.g. copyright
> and remix culture, and does not have e.g. the "open government"
> connotations of "freedom of information".  I frequently try to import
> all of the above phrases into "free culture" but I get the feeling that
> people don't really get what I'm talking about, since I am trying to
> shovel a truly insane amount of issues into a single overloaded term and
> few people are familiar with all of the issues I am trying to cram under
> that banner.  It may be better to use a neologism or bring forth an
> obscure little-known term rather than overloading "Free Culture".
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Peace,
> ~Nelson Pavlosky~
> Co-founder, Students for Free Culture
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