Free Culture, Full Text: Listen to it here.

From Lessig’s talk at Oscon and the first thirty pages of his book, we can define free culture as well as identify the main points of his argument.

Free culture (more akin to free markets rather than free beer) is the opposite of permission culture. It supports creators and innovators, but also allows future innovators to build on past works without the hindrance of past creators. Free culture gives rightful value to the ideas and creators of those ideas. If a work or an idea is truly valuable, it will become a part of a foundation upon which other thinkers and creators should be able to build. Permission culture is essentially a large group of people who each have their own brick but refuse to come together to make a house. They might get rained on, but at least they’ve maintained claim over their own bricks.

Lessig states in Free Culture that the law is altering the way culture gets made (xv). The commercial culture umbrella is growing by the day, and the transmission of ideas is being regulated to the point of inconvenience and inaccessibility, and in some cases is being stopped altogether. The Internet was beginning to bridge the gap, and industries whose dollars depend on regulated material began to sweat furiously, making the rash decision to overregulate the uncharted terrain of the Web in order to head off their own demise.  Lessig says we’ve become a permission culture rather than a free one.

Before the Internet and all its regulation crises, there was the shift in radio programming. Lessig talks about the development of FM radio, how the quality and scope of broadcast outshined AM’s capabilities by far, but a combination of corporate fear, bureaucracy, and money delayed its inevitable rise to popularity. An important detail to point out in this case is that this was essentially one man, Edwin Armstrong, was fighting all of the opponents of this new technology, and while he as an individual crumbled, we as a population of users have much greater power and need to use it.

Lessig makes an important point in his discussion of the Causbys – we must distinguish what can be labeled private property as well as what should be labeled piracy, and our main gauge of this should be our own common sense. The Douglas statement can be generalized and applied to current disputes over property rights and still make sense:

“To recognize such private claims to [property] would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only the public has a just claim.” (Lessig 2)

But what is a just claim? As a creator of information which I plan to profit from, don’t I have a just claim in ensuring that others don’t reap my benefits? Or do I owe society that information if it will add to the pool of common knowledge and better our society?

Lessig talks about Disney’s rise to fame, giving a more detailed description of the way Walt and Co. freely used material that they repurposed, copyrighted, and now restrict completely. Even though Mickey Mouse belongs to our culture in the same way the Brothers Grimm does, we are forbidden from building upon the idea of Mickey in the way that Disney built an empire upon stories he did not write. The eleven extensions of the copyright protection term, appropriately deemed the Mickey Mouse protection act, show how government and business are both desperate to retain control over certain images and works as long as they can be used as commodities.

Much of this material is covered in his talk at Oscon. Lessig challenges all of us to look at what we’re supporting with our dollars, with our participation, and with our consent, and he urges us to stand up and do something about it.

Talk, shown in Lessig Method–

Refrain:

1) Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

In the beginning, free culture was our birth. Lessig says that in 1790, when “free culture was carried to America,” we were able to create a “regime that left creativity unregulated.” And it stayed unregulated until Disney decided they didn’t want to be a cultural building block. Fast forward, and we have eleven extensions of copyright term of protection – the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” per Lessig (Transcript p. 1). Out went public domain. Culture is now a commodity to be owned.

2) The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Lessig discusses the expansion of not only the term for which a work is covered, but also the extent to which a work is covered by copyright protection. He notes that in the beginning, only the work was protected, but that expanded into copies, then derivatives, and the time limits for coverage expanded with the definition of property.

3) Free Societies enable the future by limiting the past.

Lessig says that the solution is to have transparent creativity. In this system of mass regulation of creativity, we have to be active in sharing, in using shared materials, in adding to the common knowledge base. Our opportunities to do this are shrinking, and we have to maintain these common places for as long as possible.

4) Ours is less and less a free society.

Lessig identifies the two biggest threats that he sees to innovation and creativity as means of cultural development: the past creators (those who are threatened by future users, who support the outdated patent system) or the power-hungry forces who desire control over future innovations. Lessig says that if we continue to do nothing, continue to allow outdated rules to be used to govern a new terrain, our ability to progress, to create, and to innovate will be regulated out of existence.

Lessig isn’t just philosophizing about these ideas; he’s acting on them. As the founder of Creative Commons, he created a home for common knowledge. With over 130 million licensed works, the site is becoming a more familiar resource, and as people continue to add to it, it will only grow in value and better reflect our culture at this point in time. He also asks people to go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to look into reviving orphan works, and to engage with state policy makers regarding these issues.

Learn: Creative Commons was founded in 2001 as a way for people to share their works in either a limited or completely unlimited way. Whereas copyright laws are in place to tell you what you can’t do with a certain work, Creative Commons licenses assure you that sharing said work is a-ok. Click the link for a general history. Some highlights:

-By 2003, 1 million CC licenses in use. 2004 showed 4.7 million. In 2005, that number jumped to 20 million. In 2006, 50 million. 2007 showed 90 million, and 2008 showed 130 million. What happened in 2005 that caused such a spike?

-Lawrence Lessig was a founding board member and CEO, but stepped down in 2008 to focus on Change Congress.

Nine Inch Nails released a full-length album with a CC license in 2008.

Share: The only way to keep this resource fresh is to continue to contribute content. If you have a work that you want to license, and you aren’t contractually bound to any other distributor, you can go here to obtain a CC license. You can choose to give users the right to manipulate or sell your work, and you can still retain your rights to the materials as well as be credited for those works – they call this a “some rights reserved” copyright.

Do: When visiting Creative Commons for materials, you first specify whether your derivative will be manipulated and whether it will be used for commercial purposes. You then have the option of searching through Google Images and Web, Yahoo Web, Flickr, Jamendo, SpinExpress, and WikiMedia Commons for materials pertaining to your keywords. Creative Commons then finds materials that meet those usage criteria.

Be aware that there is a disclaimer: you have to verify that the results of your query have CC licenses.

There is so much to say about Lessig. Much of it can be found on the Wikipedia entry about him, but for our purposes, I’d like to note a few fun facts:

Education:

B.A. in Economics, and B.S. in Management – University of Pennsylvania

M.A., Philosophy – University of Cambridge

J.D. – Yale

You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, and academia.edu.

Lessig is currently a professor at Harvard Law School. He is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard U. Before coming to Harvard, Lessig taught at Stanford and University of Chicago. He was a member of the Digital Universe board of advisors as well.

He is also one of the founding board members of Creative Commons (please see next post), which shows that he practices what he preaches in the sense of going out and pushing back against the powers that are trying to limit creativity and free use. He is also a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and advocates for relaxed copyright restrictions on “orphaned works,” materials whose copyright owners are difficult to find, especially in cases where users are willing to pay for rights to use them.

He has tilted his focus from free culture and copyright restrictions to political corruption, and founded the Change Congress project, an organization that seeks to lessen the influence of money on politicians by giving constituents the power to hold them accountable for their actions.

Books and articles Lessig has written or to which he’s contributed.

Communications of the ACM, Jan 2003/Vol 46 No 1

Karp is a principal scientist at Hewlett-Packard. He heads up the Virus Safe Computing Initiative, and there is a video of his Google TechTalk Presentation explaining their group’s approach to security, as opposed to HP’s other security teams, on YouTube (can also be linked from page above).

Karp’s security philosophy, the principle of least authority (POLA), limits the capabilities of programs themselves and attempts to put control in the hands of the authorized user. This philosophy has not been successful, and was even scrapped by the NSA, according to Karp. However, Karp says that, despite the inconveniences that come putting all your security chickens in the access control basket, we as users can avoid feature starvation, a phenomenon which occurs when we refrain from taking useful actions (such as adding attachments) or running useful programs because we are afraid of viruses.

Karp holds a BS from Rensselaer Tech and a PhD in Astronomy from University of Maryland. He was an assistant professor at Dartmouth before making the move to industry. After working at IBM for 15 years, he came to HP. Great links to his projects, notably Polaris, on Karp’s HP bio site.

He does not have much of an online presence in terms of social media, but he has written or collaborated on over 40 articles.

A list of Karp’s works can be found here. And this project of Karp’s is just plain exciting.

Karp wrote this piece in 2003, only two years after Napster was shut down and the desperation of industries reliant on copyrighted materials was bared for all to see. As Karp notes, the ability to reproduce exact copies with the same integrity as the original works is an issue that the music, publishing, and movie industries are going to have to adapt to rather than fight.

His main ideas:

1)   Despite the invention of technologies that allow users to reproduce, industries who depend on their control of materials have survived. Karp points out the history of technological shifts, such as the invention of copy machines and video recorders. Publishing houses and production companies still produce books and movies, despite the availability of technology that lets users reproduce from originals.

Question: Should we really treat the advancements of digital reproduction capabilities the same as we treated the invention of copy machines? I say no, because we have to factor in integrity. A copy machine can copy text, but not the book experience. An mp3 replicates material and user experience.

2)   Other industries – like the adult film industry – have embraced unregulated copying and file sharing and are thriving. Why? He leaves this question open, and I am interested in hearing what others have to say about this. I think that sharing sparks interest and creates communities in which more sharing takes place. Members of the communities then seek out material they’ve been introduced to and find new, available material in the process, which they then share. People are willing to pay for the familiar, and familiarity is bred within communities. A price tag and a copyright do not necessarily make for a commodity; user interest gives that file value, and sharing materials within communities generates such interest.

3)   The industries that feel threatened need to look at the two aspects to profitable business, as Karp states: added value and barriers to entry. What can they provide that the competition can’t, and how are they going to maintain that ability to provide such unique services so their competition doesn’t drive them out of business?

4)   Change is inevitable, and these industries must adapt. Their business model has been built around what these industries previously had to offer in the way of added value. Now that their goods are easily and cheaply reproduced and far more accessible than ever before, publishers and production companies have to repackage their products (Karp suggests with metadata) in order to continue to appeal to their audiences.

I’m glad Karp offered solutions, but I wouldn’t find his ideas comforting if I made money selling copyrighted materials. Do you think he was on the right track? Is metadata the key? Do we care enough about special features (iTunes Extras?) to pay for a movie, a book, or a song? These industries face the challenge of redefining and repackaging the user experience and selling it as something that can’t be found in the file itself.

My first foray into the site, after creating a minimal profile, was to do a quick job search. At that point I hadn’t seen the list of updates on the side of my screen (as I hadn’t added any contacts yet), and I wondered if there was an alert that would have gone out to my audience of connections that I was searching for a job. This could appear suspicious to some of my connections, such as my supervisor or my colleague in the marketing department. I still haven’t seen anything incriminating pop up about anyone else, and hopefully everyone is analyzing the different capabilities just as I am. Paranoia aside, this site does the job of connecting people via their professional interests – goal reached.

In my job search, I learned about positions that I didn’t know existed, but that I might be interested in (perhaps they are ones-of-kinds, much like “Findability Engineer…”).

LinkedIn’s structure defines, classifies, and limits what information is important to professional contacts and potential employers. I noticed this when comparing a colleague/friend’s FB page to her LI page. She is an online communications manager for In Defense of Animals, and she is also an accomplished culinary artist. I say artist because her FB page is plastered with artfully captured images of her dishes, many of which can be found on PostPunkKitchen.com. While she doesn’t consider her work with food to be a professional endeavor, she certainly has the ability to make money from cooking. However, if she were to market herself as a chef, her culinary resume exists in photo form. She could write it out, but it would lose much of its effect. LinkedIn doesn’t allow her a place to upload multiple photos, and I couldn’t find a place to upload a portfolio. I suppose she could link to it, but that’s one more degree of separation from information, which creates one more chance for a user to lose interest and log off. At any rate, LinkedIn needs a portfolio section to better serve professionals whose “resumes” are collections of visual materials.

Interface: Not beautiful. Somewhat chaotic. Academia.com was easier on the eyes. The color scheme and layout is very cold with no opportunity to customize. If LinkedIn allowed users to customize pages, it would provide another vehicle for users to convey their ability to express themselves and create online identity. This could be provide valuable insight into the people behind the profiles for potential employers, especially in fields that demand a working knowledge of user-friendly design.

The purpose of this site is to help members of the academic community identify others with similar research interests and possibly connect. Users can find people they might wish to connect with by searching through universities/departments, through research categories and subcategories, and by names of people and publications. Overall I found it to be effective in connecting people with similar interests. This is definitely a site that will grow in value as its user base grows. The amount of information currently available on the site is staggering; I’m interested in seeing how this site will have affected the academic community five years from now. 

This site could be helpful for researchers in any phase of their work. I could also see this as being a useful resource for people searching for graduate schools; if there are enough student/faculty participants in a particular department, then the site can give a detailed picture of how the department is functioning at that moment in time, whereas a school’s Web site may not be updated as often, and even then they often only provide a list of names and dissertation themes/titles. 

I would think that this space might be threatening to publishers of academic work, and users have to be careful about posting draft versions and removing final versions of papers selected for publication. As the site’s user base grows, members of academic communities might feel that they can reach more people by releasing their work to their academia.edu network than they could to a network of journal readers, and this could become a rights management issue down the road.

This site does not constrain the user to searching within his or her own discipline. Also, because the user can create subcategories in the research interests section, certain subject matter that may have been traditionally linked to a particular discipline no longer has to be confined to that field. It seems like the creators of this site lean a little towards Wark’s way of thinking when it comes to sharing knowledge and allowing the borders of disciplines to bleed into one another. 

The people who built and maintain academia.edu have pages themselves, and even though the Web developer’s site is not as content-laden as the philosopher’s page, all those in charge of the upkeep of the site are participants, which we have determined is vital in trying to understand and improve social media platforms. 

While the interface is streamlined and easy on the eyes, it doesn’t allow for much aesthetic customization. In this arena, however, the content is the focus, not necessarily the look of the page. The site creators deprioritized the idea of making a visual impression on fellow users; I wonder if that was intentional. One of the key people behind the site is a Web designer, and he chose to deny users agency when it comes to the look of their site. 

As they do with Twitter, academia.edu users have the potential to create communities across geographical and cultural barriers. A person’s fame, frequency of publication, or status in the academic world aren’t necessarily factors that bar two people from communicating. That being said, I am now following Stephen Hawking. I can’t wait to see what his updates look like.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Raymond makes the case for open source software by explaining how he was able to improve a program with the help of the user community by making information available as it was developed. This pragmatic approach to software development, the bazaar approach, is juxtaposed with the cathedral model, that is, when the development process is kept under wraps and only the few people involved are taking on the task of working out the problems.

Raymond found that he could throw an idea out in raw form and let trusted users point out the flaws. In giving feedback, users help refine the program while at the same time notice the reflection of feedback in subsequent revisions, solidifying the community and giving them an ego boost. He notes the importance of the programmer engaging and recognizing “co-developers” while taking an active role as a community member.

He notes the benefits of having the community involved throughout the entire development process. He references The Mythical Man-Month, noting that adding more workers to a project at the end will often slow down the process. If they are included from the beginning, they will be familiar with the project and will quickly recognize strengths and flaws. As Raymond points out, if people are continuously using the program and identifying the problems, there isn’t much chance for any flaws to go unnoticed, meaning less backtracking later.

However, in his “constructive laziness,” he still recognizes that to not have to reinvent the wheel, you have to have the wheel. The cathedrals have the resources, time, and manpower to create these first wheels, and even if they come out square, that at least gives the people in the bazaar a starting point.

Fred Turner: Communications Professor at Stanford, former journalist.

How Digital Media Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons from the First Hackers’ Conference

Turner writes about hackers trying to situate themselves in a changing world, specifically a changing economy.  Should information be free or protected? And to what extent? How do we balance our need to make a living with our desire to make progress?

Turner’s analyzes technological advances in history and society’s response to those advances. When new technology emerges, so does a spirit of optimism, creativity, and innovation. But we eventually lose that mentality and mark off our territory, pull property in closer. What happens to that idea of utopia? Is this when we separate into planners and hackers?

It seems to me like the planners, as Turner described them, go on to form cathedrals; the hackers try to cultivate bazaars. But, this shows that both groups do have a rightful place. The planners are the ones with the technical finesse, and they have the ability to create raw materials that hackers and other bazaar-ites can improve upon.

I found Robert Woodhead’s idea about giving away the tools, just not the end product, to be interesting. In the struggle for balance in information sharing, how do we know what is too much to give away?

I think the reason cyberculture has become an interdisciplinary interest is because of its dual identity as a phenomenon to be analyzed as well as a tool to be used (much like writing in general), meaning the engineers and the liberal arts folks finally have a table that they are both willing to take a seat at.  But, while Sterne and other scholars are theorizing on the use of sound in place of the visual, we still live in a heavily visual, heavily text-based society – practical use and theory are still separated by a wide gap, and the definition of cyberculture is  going to vary across the disciplines. Perhaps we haven’t been able to pin down a definition and create a curriculum around cyberculture or Internet Studies as its own discipline is because of scholars’ tendencies to view cyberculture through the lens of their own disciplines. But isn’t that how scholars of different disciplines view the study of writing as well, through their own lenses?

My name is Ashley, and I am in my last semester in the Professional Writing program at ODU. I am interested in learning more about the different uses of social software. As a grassroots campaign coordinator at PETA, I work with our marketing department to maximize outreach efforts via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other means, but I don’t use these tools directly. I want to get a better grasp on both the “how” and the “why” of the most widely used social networking tools on the internet in hopes of becoming a participant, not just an onlooker.