Tag Archives: free content

Free culture against arbitrary censorship

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I was browsing today, reading on the debate on whether or not censorship only occurs when it is performed by the government or some violent non-state actor. 

Then I happened upon this appeal issued by the EFF, calling for an end to censorship. It particularly hit home with the following:

Unfortunately, these values are only as strong as the will to support them. When individuals or companies choose to turn their backs on protected speech, we all lose.

 

Mike Linksvayer further expanded upon this idea, in the vein of copyright reform, by advocating free culture licenses as an altruistic rejection of one’s own privilege of censorship:

Not only does EFF fight censorship, they also retain almost no right to censor works they produce. They use a Creative Commons Attribution license, which only requires giving credit to make any use (well, any use that doesn’t imply endorsement). You should also join them is saying no to censorship in this way — no to your own ability to be a censor.

Finally, Freenet operates upon a principle of plausible deniability, whereby users of nodes are immediately saddled with a random, anonymous cache of block data on their corresponding hard drive disks, the result of which is that both everyone and no-one takes ownership of the hosting of prohibited content. This allows for Freenet to operate on an increasingly-absolute idea of "freedom of speech" – that no one within or outside can take down one iota of content or take exclusive ownership of said content from the ether of Freenet. 

 
So should there be a more tight-knit infrastructure for the non-coercive reduction of arbitrary censorship, and do the likes of Creative Commons, Freenet, the Freedom Box project headed by Eben Moglen, the much-discussed open alternative DNS system, and others contribute to such a realization?

Idea: Creative Commons multi-genre convention

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 It’s not free publicity, but I think that organizing a multi-genre convention for only Creative Commons-licensed and other freely-licensed works (literature, music, performance art, etc.) would be a good means by which users of Creative Commons and free media licenses from all genres and niches can meet face-to-face, promote their works, and collaborate. It could be massive, and it could lead to the furtherance of a fandom or devoted following for such works.

Of course, there’s the iCommons iSummit, but I’m not sure if it’s going for the sort of elevation that is most associated with fan conventions.

Fairware

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Wikibin, a data dump for discarded Wikipedia articles, defines "fairware" as software released and distributed for a "symbolic (fair) price.." or "any software of which the cost is marginal in comparison to the benefit"; among the examples that it offers are Internet sites which market "software for one dollar" and Wishapp.com. 

However, wouldn’t fairware be a good replacement for the term freeware, since "freeware" is usually defined as software that is distributed without any demand for payment from the user but only allows the user the right to apply the software according to the stipulations and constraints of an accompanying EULA, while withholding both the ability to access or manipulate the source code and resell the software?

At best, the restrictions of freeware are most comparable with the legal concept of "fair use" rather than "free" use; hence "fairware". Furthermore, even the fairware definition provided by Daniel and Rubenstein would also fit the "fair use" definition if such-defined software did not come with the ability of "free use" that comes within the traditional definitions of "free software" and "free content".

“Enhanced content”

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OK, so in the movement away from proprietary source software models, you’ve had “free software” and “open source software” as a duo of thrilling buzzwords, with the accompanying licenses and license approval/endorsement non-profits, for the last decade or so, often meaning the same thing (also known as “FOSS”) more times than when they don’t. In recent years, Microsoft wanted to move in this direction with their term “shared source”, with the most liberal and mutual “shared source” licenses not being fully accepted by the OSI as being in the same spirit as other “open source” licenses.

However, who’d have known that there was a software license that contained more “free sauce” than what even the FSF and Debian-legal could stomach?

The HESSLA (Hacktivismo Enchanced-Source Software License Agreement), published by the Hacktivismo collective, intends to go further “left” of the common definitions of “free software” (as pursued by the FSF/GNU, BSDs, and Apache) by not only ensuring the mutual, sharing and openness of the software for all those who may download it, use it, modify it or sell it, but also placing restrictions on the usage of the software for the violation of human rights or making modifications to it that would be constituted in legal terms as “spyware”.

Of course, such clauses place the HESSLA outside of the DFSG and FSF’s fields of endorsement, as such clauses are seen as unnecessary and unrealistic in their enforcement.

But what if the HESSLA’s terms, notable for the idea of “enhanced source”, could be reapplied to a more popular (and enforceable?) realm of public acceptance as an “enhanced content” license?

As has the focus of software development shifted to a more volunteer/hobbyist/non-profit stance, the last few years have seen the growth in publishing and usage of “free content”, which grant mutual legal rights of access to recipients and developers in the same or similar spirit as “free software”; the same has happened with “open content” and “shared content”, which, like their software equivalents, allow for private and public viewing and usage of the content under increasingly restrictive terms in like order.

So what would an “enhanced content” (no, not the type that you see and hear on CDs and DVDs) license read like?

Well, like a few of the less-popular free content licenses out there, like the Against DRM 2.0 license, it would grant use of “related rights” in opposition to “reserved rights” and it would expressly prohibit the implementation of DRM controls in the modification of the content.

Also, like HESSLA, it would prohibit stuff like embedding spyware binaries inside image files, and that the file wouldn’t be used for communication that would be utilized by institutions with the purpose of violating human rights.

Such a license, I assume, would be popular for those who may frequent websites like Wikileaks, since information that is prohibited from usage or modification in the purpose of forcefully disrupting the freedom of information of any one individual would, theoretically, be useful in the resistance against such impending disruption.

At least, theoretically.