Free Culture movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works, using the Internet as well as other media, and objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, which many members of the movement also argue hinder creativity. Closely associated with the free culture movement are organizations in the free software movement, such as the Free Software Foundation.
Another organization commonly associated with free culture is Creative Commons (CC), founded by Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and a prominent figure in the free software movement. He wrote a book called Free Culture, which provides many arguments in favor of the free culture movement.
The student organization FreeCulture.org is sometimes confusingly called "the Free Culture Movement," but that is not its official name. The organization is a subset of the greater movement.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia's projects, which are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and different Creative Commons licences arguably constitute the largest single free culture project. Wikimedia was founded by Jimmy Wales. Based on ideas of the free culture movement, Jimmy Wales also has announced ten challenges for the movement in general with A Free Culture Manifesto at the Wikimania 2005.
According to Jimmy Wales, those 10 things that should be free within the next decade are:
- Encyclopedia in all languages; Wikipedia
- Dictionary in and for all languages; Wiktionary
- Curriculum in every language and for every grade; Wikibooks, Wikiversity
- Music
- Art
- Free file formats
- Maps
- Product identifiers
- TV listings
- Communities
Categories: Cultural movements | Free software culture and documents