This idea of giving credit is incredibly interesting; mostly because of its double meaning. For the purpose of this paper, I will be looking at giving credit in a literal sense- where a contribution is explicitly recognized, granting the contributor his/her due. I will also be noting the idiom’s other sense, where a person’s intellect and ethical values are taken into consideration. I really think that the polysemy of this expression is representative of what the Free Culture movement is all about.

Lawrence Lessig, who wrote the book the movement was founded on, is the director of the Edmond J. Safra  Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard Law School, yet he is one of the leading advocates for reduced legal restriction of copyrighted works. Creative commons, the organization he founded, presents different licensing options that may allow for a richer public domain, yet also expects people to appreciate and respect what they call “reasonable copyright”. In a sense they are giving the public, the benefit of the doubt. They are giving them more credit, than to assume that this seemingly more relaxed structure will be abused by infringers.

In this paper I will, first, look at what the movement is actually about, as well as its creation, its advocates, affiliated organizations, and projects that have been development for its advancement. The second part of my work will be researching the opposition the movement faces and criticism of some of Lessig’s Free Culture theories.

Lessig’s free culture, the Students for Free Culture website, and a few videos containing presentations and interviews with the movement’s pioneers will be my principal sources. I will use a few articles to complement them, as well.

Today The Consumerist posted a news article announcing that the city of Philadelphia is closing the Philadelphia Free Library and all its branches on October 2nd, due to the economy and the city’s failure to work out its budget on time. I had a pretty visceral (and expletive-heavy) reaction when I saw this article in the RSS feed for our class.

Libraries, like pay-what-you-can museums and public parks, are cornerstones of functioning societies. They are cultural grounding points, and symbolize an effort on the part of the government to ensure that resources often reserved for middle and upper classes (modern technology, Internet access, archived knowledge, and so on) are made available to everyone. They aren’t just about loaning free entertainment to everyone, though that in itself isn’t an objective that should be sniffed at. Libraries often offer free activities for children whose parents can’t afford expensive after-school programs, to no-fee or very discounted classes for adults looking to build their work skills in order to find a job. They are institutions firmly centered around the idea that information is non-rivalrous and the more people that have it, the better.

The entire library system reminds me a lot of the society Barlow envisioned in his Economy of Ideas, even if it already existed when Barlow was hypothesizing about the future some decade and change ago. There’s this belief that all patrons to this source of free culture will treat the materials with care, respect the facility, and return everything in an orderly fashion so that the flow of information isn’t interrupted. And even if “all patrons” is a bit too ideal, the fact is that most patrons do just this, or at least enough of them that the endeavor is considered worthwhile. If you don’t follow the rules, the worst thing that happens seems to be a nominal fee that you can generally pay at your own leisure, and many branches are super forgiving about seeking reimbursement for late and even damaged materials.

All in all, with so much heated, often vicious back-and-forth going on over copyright and digital “piracy,” what are the ramifications when we can’t even protect the bit of state-sanctioned free culture that we already have?