What is Free Culture?
I have thought about the question "What is Free Culture?" for some time. Benjamin Mako Hill’s "Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement" encouraged me to write this weblog entry.
Basically i agree with Benjamin Mako Hill. While we have a clear definition for Free Software nobody knows the basic freedoms for culture or can offer a generally accepted definition.
The first question is: What is culture? Is it music, novels, biographies, reference books, manuals, movies, computer-games, (even) software..? Is it all together or just a part of it? Does all the works need the same minimum of freedom or are there differences?
I think regulation is not necessary bad. It always depends on the right balance between the author and the society. In my opinion, if some regulation of the society also creats some useful benefits for the society it’s probably a good tradeoff.
As long as we talk about (functional) software i think the Free Software definition is the right answere. But if we come to computer games, wich is software too, but more entertainment than functionality, i think it’s already no longer clear. I remember that even Richard Stallman has mentioned in one of his speeches that maybe we could make a distinction between the functional part (e.g. game engine) of a game an the entertainment part (e.g. art, levels,…). But it wouldn’t be that easy and if we talk about all the other things which you can classify as culture it become even more difficult.
So the question remains. What is free culture? Will there be ever a definition for free culture? Is it even possible to find a generally accepted definition for all the different kind of works which we call culture? Or is everything we can do offering a variety of licenses like Creative Commons and hope that the authors will make the right decision for every single work?