Visions of Free Culture

At the Free Culture National Conference a few weeks ago, Kevin Driscoll initiated a project that I feel is hugely important: he’s prompted the free culture community to state and share their vision.

While I’ve talked a lot about definitions in the past, I probably should have been talking about goals or vision. Kevin has created an important opportunity for all free culture stakeholders to step back and imagine what the world will look like when we win. By doing so, we end up defining a set of implicit goals for our social movement and can then set to work on the hard part: figuring out how we get there.

With thanks to Eben Moglen for much of the inspiration, here’s mine:

People remembered that there is no scarcity in information goods except where they have created it. As evidence grew of the positive effects of free culture and the toll of information ownership, our communities decided that we were not well served by limits on the flow and development of knowledge.

Accordingly, the gatekeepers and tax collectors for culture have withered away and were dismantled. We — the consumers, creators, and re-creators — have offered new, more ethical business models, have engaged in new methods of distribution, and have produced creative goods.

Today, access to information is a simple matter of connecting someone to a network and a community: a technical problem that we know how to solve. Nobody pays for the "right" to hear music, read a book, watch a movie, or use a piece of software. Nobody is forced to choose between being a bad neighbor or friend and breaking copyright law. No artist, musician, or author sells a million copies of anything and no artist, musician, or author has a day job.

Now it’s your turn. Eben Moglen tell us to not stop until we’re free. Let’s paint a picture of what that free world looks like. Most importantly, let’s challenge ourselves to find ways to make it possible.

5 Replies to “Visions of Free Culture”

  1. I’m curious to know why you believe “No artist, musician, or author sells a million copies of anything”.

    Surely, with cultural freedom, everyone can sell as many copies of each other’s works as they want?

    All that ends are the monopolies. Or do you look forward to a prohibition on any sale of copies?

    Cultural freedom does not mean commercial abstinence.

  2. I understand that cultural freedom does not mean commercial abstinence. That’s why the next line says that artists won’t have day jobs.

    I suppose I believe, it’s the creation of scarcity that leads to celebrity. The reason one person can be super-famous is because nobody is hearing hundreds of thousands of other artists and musicians. Celebrity is, by definition, something that comes from a centralized system.

    I don’t think that modern Britney Spears styles celebrities that sell tens of millions of CDs will be possible in a world where culture is something we all produce and distribute among peers and not something we see on MTV and Pepsi commercials.

  3. One of the reasons for the ‘million of cds sold’ numbers are to measure profit or popularity and not quality. If the access to content is no longer difficult, what would those numbers measure? What would then be measured? What would be comparable to a ‘gold record’?  Also, content owners look to make profit by selling to the certain demographic that can most afford to buy their goods. So if “artists dont have a day job”, would they all be paid the same? Proportional to their downloads? Could anybody become an ‘artist’ and game the system for the income?

  4. I like your vision statement except for

    “No artist, musician, or author sells a million copies of anything and no artist, musician, or author has a day job.”

    The first part seems to depend on the wrongheaded no-stars idea below and the second either depends on fantasy star trek economics (and is equivalent to “nobody has a day job”) or an artificial distinction between artist and non-artist.

    “I suppose I believe, it’s the creation of scarcity that leads to celebrity. The reason one person can be super-famous is because nobody is hearing hundreds of thousands of other artists and musicians. Celebrity is, by definition, something that comes from a centralized system.”

    You’re going to have to provide a critique of power laws for this to be credible. (As a pop culture hater I wish you were right but am pretty sure you are wrong.)

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