[Freecon] Meeting notes - May 20th 2015

[Josh Juran]

On May 20, 2015, at 5:13 PM, Torrie Fischer <tdfischer at hackerbots.net> wrote:

> Must have been some disconnect since I feel that I explained what free culture 
> is and asked if anyone was unclear on it.

I think at that point I was rattled by the preceding argument and not participating fully.

> Free Culture is a wider movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and 
> modify creative works of any medium. In terms of software, that'd be Free 
> Software. Free Culture rejects the notion of copyright, arguing that such a 
> framework restricts creative expression through the development of a 
> "permission" culture.

Copyleft embraces copyright, the better to subvert it.  A hypothetical world with no copyright would have no takedowns or infringement suits, but less open source code (because the GPL wouldn't be enforceable, so many forks would be closed).[1]

A term I've heard the EFF using for permission culture is "copyright maximalism".  Note that this is *also* a subversion (or more of a perversion) of copyright, making certain uses of your own property illegal and eliminating the public domain.

Josh

[1] "Open/closed" rather than "free/proprietary", since the latter distinction wouldn't exist.