Free Culture (book)
Encyclopedia
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (2004) (published in paperback as Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity) is a book by law professor Lawrence Lessig
that was released on the Internet
under the Creative Commons
Attribution/Non-commercial license (by-nc 1.0) on March 25, 2004.
, which propounded that software has the effect of law. Free Culture' s message is different, Lessig writes, because it is "about the consequence of the Internet to a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important." (pg. xiv)
Professor Lessig analyzes the tension that exists between the concepts of piracy
and property
in the intellectual property
realm in the context of what he calls the present "depressingly compromised process of making law" that has been captured in most nations by multinational corporations that are interested in the accumulation of capital and not the free exchange of ideas.
The book also chronicles his prosecution of the Eldred v. Ashcroft
case and his attempt to develop the Eldred Act also known as the Public Domain Enhancement Act or the Copyright Deregulation Act.
Lessig concludes his book by suggesting that as society evolves into an information society
there is a choice to be made to decide if that society is to be free or feudal in nature. In his afterword he suggests that free software
pioneer Richard Stallman
and the Free Software Foundation
model of making content available is not against the capitalist approach that has allowed such corporate models as Westlaw
and LexisNexis
to have subscribers to pay for materials that are essentially in the public domain
but with underlying licenses like those created by his organization Creative Commons.
He also argues for the creation of shorter renewable periods of copyright and a limitation on derivative rights, such as limiting a publisher's ability to stop the publication of copies of an author's book on the internet for non-commercial purposes or create a compulsory licensing scheme to ensure that creators obtain direct royalties for their works based upon their usage statistics and some kind of taxation scheme such as suggested by professor William Fisher
of Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/PTKChapter6.pdf that is similar to a longstanding proposal of Richard Stallman.
Besides audio production, this book was also translated into Chinese
, a project proposed by Isaac Mao
and completed as a collaboration involving many bloggers from mainland China and Taiwan. Other translations include Catalan, Czech http://wiki.root.cz/Main/FreeCulture, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese http://www.rau-tu.unicamp.br/nou-rau/softwarelivre/document/?view=144 and Spanish :es:Cultura libre (libro)#Versiones.
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
that was released on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
under the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution/Non-commercial license (by-nc 1.0) on March 25, 2004.
"There has never been a time in history when more of our 'culture' was as 'owned' as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now." (pg. 28)
Summary
In the preface of Free Culture, Lessig compares the book with a previous book of his, Code and Other Laws of CyberspaceCode and Other Laws of Cyberspace
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a book by Lawrence Lessig. It has evolved into a partially wiki-written book Code v2 under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.- Main topic :...
, which propounded that software has the effect of law. Free Culture
Professor Lessig analyzes the tension that exists between the concepts of piracy
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
and property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
in the intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
realm in the context of what he calls the present "depressingly compromised process of making law" that has been captured in most nations by multinational corporations that are interested in the accumulation of capital and not the free exchange of ideas.
The book also chronicles his prosecution of the Eldred v. Ashcroft
Eldred v. Ashcroft
Eldred v. Ashcroft, was a court case in the United States challenging the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act...
case and his attempt to develop the Eldred Act also known as the Public Domain Enhancement Act or the Copyright Deregulation Act.
Lessig concludes his book by suggesting that as society evolves into an information society
Information society
The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally through using IT in a creative and productive way. An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic,...
there is a choice to be made to decide if that society is to be free or feudal in nature. In his afterword he suggests that free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
pioneer Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
and the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
model of making content available is not against the capitalist approach that has allowed such corporate models as Westlaw
Westlaw
Westlaw is one of the primary online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals in the United States and is a part of West. In addition, it provides proprietary database services...
and LexisNexis
LexisNexis
LexisNexis Group is a company providing computer-assisted legal research services. In 2006 it had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information...
to have subscribers to pay for materials that are essentially in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
but with underlying licenses like those created by his organization Creative Commons.
He also argues for the creation of shorter renewable periods of copyright and a limitation on derivative rights, such as limiting a publisher's ability to stop the publication of copies of an author's book on the internet for non-commercial purposes or create a compulsory licensing scheme to ensure that creators obtain direct royalties for their works based upon their usage statistics and some kind of taxation scheme such as suggested by professor William Fisher
William W. Fisher
William "Terry" W. Fisher III is the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society...
of Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/PTKChapter6.pdf that is similar to a longstanding proposal of Richard Stallman.
Derivative works
A day after the book was released online, blogger AKMA suggested that people pick a chapter and make a voice recording of it, partly because they were allowed to. Users who commented volunteered to narrate certain chapters. Two days later, most of the book had been narrated.Besides audio production, this book was also translated into Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, a project proposed by Isaac Mao
Isaac Mao
Isaac Mao is a venture capitalist, software architect, and student researcher from the People's Republic of China, known for co-founding of CNBlog.org and for his research in social learning...
and completed as a collaboration involving many bloggers from mainland China and Taiwan. Other translations include Catalan, Czech http://wiki.root.cz/Main/FreeCulture, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese http://www.rau-tu.unicamp.br/nou-rau/softwarelivre/document/?view=144 and Spanish :es:Cultura libre (libro)#Versiones.
Editions
- US 1st hardcover edition: ISBN 1-59420-006-8
- US 1st paperback edition: ISBN 0-14-303465-0
External links
- Official site
- Free Culture
- Multiple Formats, searchable version available online ( html, XML, opendocument ODF, pdf (landscape, portrait), plaintext, concordance ), SiSUSiSUSiSU , is a Unix command line-oriented framework for document structuring, publishing and search.-Usage:...
- Free Culture lecture flash animation 8.6 mg see index for alternatives: http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/
- Washington Post review
- Purple numbered version
- Lessig Speaks at Swarthmore - Professor Lessig's lecture at Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore CollegeSwarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
- Collaborative Audio Book