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free_culture.md
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Free (as in freedom) culture is a movement aiming for the relaxation of [intellectual property](intellectual_property.md) restrictions, mainly that of [copyright](copyright.md), to allow free usage, reusing and sharing of [artworks](art.md) and other kind of [information](information.md). Free culture argues that our society has gone too far in forcefully restricting the natural freedom of information by very strict laws (e.g. by authors holding copyright even 100 years after their death) and that we're hurting art, creativity, education and progress by continuing to strengthen restrictions on using, modifying ([remixing](remix.md)) and sharing things like [books](book.md), [music](music.md) and scientific papers. The word "free" in free culture refers to freedom, not just price -- free cultural works have to be more than just available gratis, they must also give its users some specific legal rights. Nevertheless free culture itself isn't against commercialization of art, it just argues for rather doing so by other means than selling legal rights to it. The opposite of free culture is [permission culture](permission_culture.md) (culture requiring permission for reuse of intellectual works).
The promoters of free culture want to relax intellectual property laws ([copyright](copyright.md), [patents](patent.md), [trademarks](tm.md) etc.) but also promote an ethic of sharing and remixing being good (as opposed to the demonizing anti-"[piracy](piracy.md)" propaganda of today), they sometimes mark their works with words **"some rights reserved"** or even "no rights reserved", as opposed to the traditional "all rights reserved".
The promoters of free culture want to relax intellectual property [laws](law.md) ([copyright](copyright.md), [patents](patent.md), [trademarks](tm.md) etc.) but also promote an ethic of sharing and remixing being good (as opposed to the demonizing anti-"[piracy](piracy.md)" propaganda of today), they sometimes mark their works with words **"some rights reserved"** or even "no rights reserved", as opposed to the traditional "all rights reserved".
Free culture is kind of a younger sister movement to **[free software](free_software.md)**, in fact it has been inspired by it (we could call it its [fork](fork.md)). While free software movement, commenced in 1983, was only concerned with freedoms related to computer program source code, free culture subsequently (circa 2000) extended the concept to all information, including e.g. artworks and scientific data. There are **clearly defined criteria** for a work to be considered free (as in freedom) work, i.e. part of the body of free cultural works. The criteria are very similar to those of free software (the definition is at https://freedomdefined.org/Definition) and can be summed up as follows:
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3. **Share it**, i.e. redistribute copies, even commercially.
4. **Modify it** and redistribute the modified copies, even commercially.
Some of these conditions may e.g. further require a source code of the work to be made available (e.g. sheet music, to allow studying and modification). Some conditions may however still be imposed, as long as they don't violate the above -- e.g. if a work allows all the above but requires crediting the author, it is still considered free (as in freedom). [Copyleft](copyleft.md) (also share-alike, requirement of keeping the license for derivative works) is another condition that may be required. This means that many (probably most) free culture promoters actually rely and even support the concept of e.g. copyright, they just want to make it much less strict.
Some of these conditions may e.g. further require a source code of the work to be made available (for example sheet music, to allow studying and modification). Some conditions may however still be imposed, as long as they don't interfere with the above -- if, let's say, a work allows all the above but requires crediting the author, it is still considered free (as in freedom). [Copyleft](copyleft.md) (also share-alike, requirement of keeping the license for derivative works) is another condition that may be required. To this end some free culture promoters actually rely and even support the concept of copyright, they just want to make it much less strict.
IMPORTANT NOTE: **[fair use](fair_use.md) (or exclusive author permission) is unacceptable in free culture!** It is an extremely common mistake, happening even among people long contributing to free culture, to think that within free culture you can use a piece of proprietary art under so called *fair use* while keeping the whole work adhering to free culture -- you cannot do this (even though e.g. [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) does this for which it actually seizes to be a completely free work). Fair use is a legal concept that allows people to use any kind of art -- even proprietary -- in some "fair" ways even without the permission of the copyright holder, i.e. for example you can likely use someone's copyrighted photograph on your website as long as you have a good justification for it (e.g. documenting a historical event with this being the only existing photo of it), if you only include a low resolution version and if you're not making money off of it -- this could be judged fair use by the court, i.e. you wouldn't be violating copyright. However a work that is to be free licensed must allow ANY use, not just fair use, i.e. it mustn't contain any part under fair use, or even under EXCLUSIVE author's permission for it to be used within that project, because such part would only limit the work to be used in the "fair use" way ONLY. While in some contexts, e.g. in hobbyist projects, such work will likely be legal, i.e. fair use, in other context, like commercial ones (which free culture MUST enable), this fair use part will suddenly seize to be fair use and the use will be illegal. Similarly if you e.g. want to use someone's music in your free culture movie, it is NOT enough to get the author's permission to use the music in your movie, the author has to give permission to EVERYONE to use it in ANY WAY, because if your movie is to be under a free license, anyone will be able to take any part out of your movie and use it in any other way. { I actually managed to get some characters out of the [SuperTuxKart](supertuxkart.md) game for this reason, there were some mascots that were used under exclusive permission, which was unacceptable and Debian maintainers sorted this out. So just for the confirmation of this fact: Debian also confirmed this. ~drummyfish }
IMPORTANT NOTE: **[fair use](fair_use.md) (or exclusive author permission) is unacceptable in free culture!** It is an extremely common mistake, happening even among people long contributing to free culture, to think that within free culture you can use a piece of proprietary art under so called *fair use* while keeping the whole work adhering to free culture -- you cannot do this (even though e.g. [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) does this for which it actually seizes to be a completely free work). Fair use is a legal concept that allows people to use any kind of art -- even proprietary -- in some "fair" ways even without the permission of the copyright holder, i.e. for example you can likely use someone's copyrighted photograph on your website as long as you have a good justification for it (e.g. documenting a historical event with this being the only existing photo of it), if you only include a low resolution version and if you're not making money off of it -- this could be judged fair use by the court, i.e. you wouldn't be violating copyright. However a work that is to be free licensed must allow ANY use, not just fair use, i.e. it mustn't contain any part under fair use, or even under EXCLUSIVE author's permission for it to be used within that project, because such part would only limit the work to be used in the "fair use" way ONLY. While in some contexts, for instance in hobbyist projects, such work will likely be legal, i.e. fair use, in other context, like commercial ones (which free culture MUST enable), this fair use part will suddenly seize to be fair use and the use will be illegal. Similarly if you e.g. want to use someone's music in your free culture movie, it is NOT enough to get the author's permission to use the music in your movie, the author has to give permission to EVERYONE to use it in ANY WAY, because if your movie is to be under a free license, anyone will be able to take any part out of your movie and use it in any other way. { I actually managed to get some characters out of the [SuperTuxKart](supertuxkart.md) game for this reason, there were some mascots that were used under exclusive permission, which was unacceptable and Debian maintainers sorted this out. So just for the confirmation of this fact: Debian also confirmed this. ~drummyfish }
During early [90s](90s.md) people tried to carry over the principles of free software to writing with what was called [FreeLore](freelore.md) ([source](https://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/FreeLorehtml.html)), however the biggest event came in 2001 when **[Lawrence Lessig](lessig.md)**, [American](usa.md) lawyer, now one of the best known free culture people, established **[Creative Commons](creative_commons.md)**, a non-profit organization which now stands as one of the pillars of the movement (even though of course some free culture proponents may still be critical of the organization itself, the organization doesn't equal the movement). By this time he was already educating people about the twisted intellectual property laws and had a few followers. Creative Commons would create and publish a set of [licenses](license.md) that anyone could use to release their works under much less restrictive conditions than those that lawfully arise by default. For example if someone creates a song and releases it under the [CC-BY](cc_by.md) license, he allows anyone to freely use, modify and share the song as long as proper attribution is given to him. It has to be noted that **NOT all Creative Commons licenses are free culture** (those with NC and ND conditions break the above given rules)! It is also possible to use other, non Creative Commons licenses in free culture, as long as the above given criteria are respected.