Free content
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Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content having no significant legal restriction relative to people's freedom to use, redistribute, and produce modified versions of and works derived from the content.[1] It is distinct from open content in that it can be modified, whereas one might not have that ability with content that is simply "open" and not "free".
Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because the law by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control over their creations, copyrighted content must be explicitly declared free, usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.
Though a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free, it can easily become non-free again with all its derivatives becoming non-free or illegal, if the copyright law changes.[2]
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[edit] Traditional Copyright
Traditionally, copyright is a legal concept, which grants the author or creator of a work, legal rights to control the distribution and display of their work, in many jurisdicitons this is limited by a time period after which the works then enter the public domain. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be distributed, displayed or modified with the consent of the author, usually via a copyright licence.
From the perspective of free content, traditional usages of copyright is limiting in several ways. It limits the distribution of the work of the author to those who can, or are willing to, afford the payment of royalties to the author for usage of the authors content. Secondly it creates a perceived barrier between authors, which limits modification of the work, such as in the form of mashups and collaborative content.
[edit] Public Domain
The public domain is a range of abstract materials–commonly referred to as intellectual property–which are not owned or controlled by anyone. A public domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished, or no longer can claim control over the distribution and usage of the work. As such any person may manipulate, distribute or otherwise utilise the work, without legal ramifications. A work released as public domain by its author is free and copycenter.[3]
[edit] Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work. The aim of copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to reuse and, in many licencing schemes, modify content that is created by an author. Unlike public domain work, the author still maintains copyright over the material, however the author has granted a non-exclusive licence to any person to distribute, and often modify, the work. Some copyleft licenses require that any derivative works be distributed under the same terms, and that the original copyright notices be maintained.
Unlike the copyright symbol, the copyleft symbol does not carry any legal connotations.
Projects that provide free content exist in several areas of interest, such as software, academic literature, general literature, music, images, video and engineering.
Technology has reduced the cost of publication, and reduced the entry barrier sufficiently to allow for the production of widely disseminated materials by individuals and small groups. Projects to provide copyleft or public domain literature have become increasingly prominent owing to the ease of dissemination of materials that is associated with the development of computer technology. Such dissemination may have been too costly prior to these technological developments.
[edit] Media
In media, which includes textual, audio and visual content, copyleft licencing schemes such as Creative commons have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Such permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution only licencing. Repositories that exclusively feature copyleft material provide content such as photographs, clip art, music and literature[4].
[edit] Software
Copyleft in software, often referred to as open source software, is a maturing technology with major companies utilising copyleft software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.
[edit] Academia
In academic work, copyleft works are still a niche phenomenon, owing to the difficulty of establishing a fully qualified peer review process. Authors may see open access publishing as a method of expanding the audience that is able to access their work to allow for greater impact of the publication[5][6]. Such difficulties notwithstanding, groups such as Public Library of Science still provide copyleft review and publishing capacity. In traditional journals, alternatives such as delayed copyleft publications are occasionally used. Some funding agencies require academic work to be published in the public domain as a grant requirement[7]. Open content publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with information retrieval in research, as universities typically pay to subscribe for access to content that is published through traditional means[8].
A subset of copyleft licenses are sometimes referred to as viral copyright licenses, this applies to licences that contain a clause stating that any works derived from a copyleft work must themselves be copyleft when distributed, usually under the same licence. An example of one of these "viral licences" is the GNU General Public Licence, which is often applied to computer programs. The viral nature of these licences are seen as applying the ideology of the original licensor on subsequent redistributors.
- ^ Richard Stallman (2008-03-20). "Free Software and Free Manuals". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved on 2008-08-08.
- ^ Nate Anderson (2008-07-16). "EU caves to aging rockers, wants 45-year copyright extension if the copyright law changes.". Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2008-08-08.
- ^ Eric S. Raymond. "Copycenter". The Jargon File. Retrieved on 2008-08-09.
- ^ "Gutenberg:No Cost or Freedom?".
- ^ "Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff".
- ^ "JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey" (PDF).
- ^ "NHMRC Partnership Projects - Funding Policy" (PDF).
- ^ "Libraries face higher costs for academic journals".
- Open Knowledge Definition – project under the aegis of the Open Knowledge Foundation which provides a definition of 'open' suitable for content and data.
- Definition of Free Cultural Works – a definition of "free content" or "free cultural works" similar to the free software definition
