Open-Source Culture
July 14th, 2005
As a supplement to my last post concerning Creative Commons licenses, here are a few related links to other “open-source culture” initiatives striving to inform people on the current problems with copyright law in the US (and, to some degree, elsewhere) and to offer smarter alternatives more applicable to digital media in the Internet-powered P2P era. It’s also not surprising that many of these organizations or concepts are savagely hostile to the Music Industry and Hollywood - but that’s the subject of a whole ‘nother rant. So if you’re even vaguely interested in intellectual-property activism and the constellation of weird legalities surrounding it all, check out these links…and demand your rights - however many or few of them you want to be responsible for!
For those interested in learning more about how “Big Media” uses copyright laws and whatnot to shackle creative freedom and intellectual property, Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture is a wonderful place to start. It will piss you off. Guaranteed. But knowing what’s going on is only the first part of getting involved. Once you know, you must become proactive.
Along with Creative Commons, FreeCulture.org is a great place to start. FC.org is an “international student movement” dedicated to spreading the memeplex of open-source culture and freedom of information using the good ol’ tried-and-true method of aiming to educate the young while they’re still full of piss and vinegar and can get excited about activism. The website itself serves as a great general clearinghouse of articles and new concerning freedom-of-information topics from around the world (though, of course, the US, Canada, and Britain/the EU are the most frequently referenced places), but also provides lots of information on starting “campus crusade”-type outlets (I’ll certainly be starting up chapters at Cal U and Penn State Fayette this Fall) as well as e-mail-based discussion lists. They’ve also sponsored an awesome horror-inspired contest allowing visitors to remix old zombie films–how freakin’ cool is that? Some of the entries are completely awesome, and I highly suggest y’all check ‘em on out, y’hear?
Downhillbattle.org is another nifty site to check out. It is SAVAGELY anti-Music Industry/anti-RIAA…but it’s not merely a highly-organized rant against Big Media’s worst offenders. Sure, it provides lots of information on how the Music Industry rapes artists and whatnot–but, more importantly, it lets visitors know exactly how they can fight back, utilizing everything from guerrilla stickering tactics (which, I’ll admit, I find pretty useless) to open-source software initiatives/tools for folks wanting to establish their own truly independent record labels or distribution centers. For instance, the organization’s “Downhill Battle Labs” offers a completely free shopping cart solution called Battle Cart to make it easy for artists and small labels to set up their own web stores. They also have established a PayPal-based floating defense fund to help individuals hammered by the RIAA and their ilk with legal costs.
This is only a small sampling of related sites dealing with copyright reform and intellectual-property concerns. A quick googling of any related keywords will find hundreds of others, but at present, these are the ones that I have become active in supporting - so use them as I have: as a starting point for your own adventures in Giving It To The Man!
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It's Creative Commons Music distributed using P2P technologies like BitTorrent and eMule/eDonkey
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