(This is mostly reposted from an Advogato article I just submitted).
About a year ago, I posted an article on Advogato entitled, Towards a
Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software
Movement. In it, I argued that Creative Commons and the free
culture movement were struggling to build a cohesive freedom movement
in the way that free and open source software had succeeded in doing
by never stopping to define the ground rules of the commons movement.
I argued that Free Software built a movement around calls for
essential freedoms and against the actions of software producers who
failed to live up to this standard. On the other hand, Creative
Commons has argued for "some rights reserved" but never explained
which rights were unreservable. In the process, they've done the
invaluable service of creating a stable of powerful, internationalized
licenses. But they failed to build the type social movement that some
of us wanted. While this was never their goal, it left some people
unsatisfied.
In a later version of the essay published in Mute Magazine, I
concluded by stating:
Whether in unison or cooperating in separate groups, it is time for
those those of us that feel strongly about freedom to discuss,
decide, and move forward with our own free information movement built
upon a standard of freedom. When we have defined free information in
terms of essential freedoms, a subset of Creative Commons works and a
subset of Creative Commons licenses will provide tools and texts
through which a social movement can be built.
I'm thrilled to say that that day is now within sight.
A few weeks ago, Larry Lessig introduced me to Erik Möller, a
Wikipedian who had read my article and was planning on launching the
same project that I had been planning. It only seemed sensible to
collaborate.
Today, we have launched a draft of a Free Content and Expression
Definition online at freedomdefined.org. The website is a wiki
and we welcome feedback, suggestions, and alternative versions of the
document.
So far, we've have decided to stick closely to the freedoms of free
software but are actively interested in updating these to be more
relevant for other types of creative works. Of course, anything, even
the name, can be changed at this point.
To guide us through the project of debating and further refining a
definition are four moderators who will ultimately be called upon to
resolve disputes and disagreements about what the definition should
and will say. These moderators are myself, Erik Möller, Creative
Commons General Counsel Mia Garlick, and Wikimedia Foundation Trustee
Angela Beesley.
You can view the announcement of the definition, please take a look at:
To view the definition itself, please visit:
