Culture

The Free Culture movement defends the right of individuals and societies to freely participate in the creation and evolution of their cultural heritage. Thanks to computers, digital media and the Internet, human creativity –both present and past– can be expressed and shared as never before.

At the same time, artificial obstacles to the creation and communication of cultural works continue to grow, such as the extension of copyright terms, the introduction of anti-sharing laws or the limitation of fair use. Instead of promoting creativity and the dissemination of culture, these legal constraints favor the economic interests of intermediaries and in many cases pose serious threats to freedom of speech and to the right of communities to their own cultural heritage.

Definition

We understand Free Culture as any expression of human creativity that can be legally communicated and modified. This includes works in the Public Domain as well as those released under Free/Libre Licenses.

For works already released under more restrictive conditions, we believe that fair use should be extended to any communication when its purpose is educational, scientific research, information, satirical or incidental to the principal creative objective, as long there is attribution and all moral rights are respected.

Thus defined, Free Culture encompasses or overlaps in one way or another with all of the activities of the FKI. However, some areas of interest are especific to this domain, such as art and cultural heritage.

• Students for Free Culture
• Free Culture Forum
• Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge. Free Culture Forum Charter from a free knowledge perspective
• La Quadrature du Net
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Culture
• FKIs Ten points for change

Get involved

Our main activity in the specific areas of Free Culture has been the participation in the Free Culture Forum and other related events.

If you would like to suggest other activities in this area, join the FKI discussion mailing list and tell us about them!

Use and produce free culture, build bottom-up participatory structures. Stop contributing to the copyright industry. Lobby your politicians to adopt legislative recommendations from the Free Culture Charter.

References

• Lessig, Lawrence, 2005. Free Culture. The Nature and Future of Creativity
• Yochai Benkler. The Wealth of Networks
• Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel. 2009. Imagine there is no copyright ...
• Philippe Aigrain. 2012. Sharing. Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age.

This page is a static version of the collaboratively edited wiki page.