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links

links for 2006-10-23

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Free Culture

The Affero Clause

The Affero clause feels right intuitively, but is it? What problem is it trying to address for software users? And in what way are we users of the software that it covers?

Matt Lee (CNUK) has argued that the Affero clause will burden end users of CRM software more than the likes of Google. And if I have to make all the code of my CRM installation available, what happens to my database_password.php file?

Crosbie Fitch (FCUK) has argued that the Affero clause confuses public and private use of software, making the GPL into a “gift economy” license rather than a rights-based license by emphasising sharing (distribution) over use.

These are persuasive arguments but they do not alter the fact that web-serivicization of Free Software looks and smells like Tivoization. In both cases the freedom to use (in the FSD sense of “use”, what I call “Mere Use”) software that was previously Free is denied to the user by measures not accounted for in GPL-2.

Web services use xml-rpc to firewall Free code inside the private space of an organization. AJAX is software executing half in your public web browser and half on a private server, again using xml-rpc or a similar method of remote procedure invocation as a firewall. And it is the fact that we are discussing method invocation that is the key. This is not a public/private or “sharing” issue. It is as an issue of how we conceive of “linking” and of “distribution” or of public use. Web services and AJAX count as providing software publicly for linking to or use by virtue of their technical construction. Their “semantics of communication”, as the GPL FAQ puts it (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html).

Perhaps then we should not think of the Affero clause as a gift-economy clause bolted on to the GPL. Instead we should think of it as a special exception for those who wish to use Free Software without giving users the freedom to tinker with the running code that Free Software normally provides. In return for this, fairly massive, exception they only have to observe the terms of the GPL that they are still capable of observing. Such as the public disclosure term.

The Affero clause is therefore still about Freedom, not “sharing”. It is the LGPL for the age of REST. If the circumstances you have created will deny me Freedom here, the Affero clause says, at least let me have it elsewhere.

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links for 2006-10-20

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links for 2006-10-18

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Aesthetics

Two Crescendos

” What about it, what about it, what about it ?
Oh, I’m pissing in a river. “
– Pissing in a river, Patti Smith.

” I’m gonna be somebody, I’m gonna get on that train, go to New York City,
I’m gonna be so bad I’m gonna be a big star and I will never return,
Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory
And I will travel light.
Oh, watch me now. “
– Piss Factory, Patti Smith.

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links for 2006-10-17

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links for 2006-10-16

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links for 2006-10-15

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Free Culture

Use, Mere Use and Cultural Use

Free Software does not have or privilege a concept of “creativity”. This is not to say that Free Software advocates are not creative (or “innovative”). Software must be written, and Hacking is generally regarded as creative. Free Software removes impediments to creativity, giving positive protection for it without explicitly mentioning it.

The concept that Free Software is based on is not creativity or Hacking but “Use”. This is use of software on computer hardware. Free Software’s “freedom of use” is reflexive, it guarantees only the freedom to use software. Some people misunderstand this and attempt to guarantee Free Software’s use for social ends or as part of a more general conception of “freedom”.

Free Software’s Use is “Mere Use”. It is not a guarantee of the usability of the products of a “gift economy” or a guarantee of social liberty. These are both downstream products of the freedoms of Mere Use, and trying to work them into definitions of Software Freedom can in fact work against it. Mere Use is a simple, minor and specific definition of freedom in a single context. It is basically not being hassled sitting at a teletype. Free Software is reform, and its Freedoms are those that restore the freedoms that users of software enjoyed historically as seen by Richard Stallman.

Cultural Freedom is historically the union of academic freedom, free speech, freedom of the press, Fair Use and consumer protection law. Culture in general may seem too broad to be a single context but our relation to it(s products) is in need of reform. “Fair Use” and use of culture in general have been undermined by IP Maximalism: expanding copyright and trademark law, media concentration, partisanship and censorship, and technological limitations on use of culture.

The equivalent reform in Free Software was effected by identifying the choke point for freedom in the relationship between individuals and software. This choke point was Use. Whether Use is a similar choke point for Culture, whether it is even coherent to speak of Use of Culture, is undecided. But it is a logical starting point.

Use of Culture would be Mere Use of Culture; Cultural Use. This is an alien concept, and culture is not normally regarded as something functional to be used in the same way that software is (or at all). But we do use books or CDs, or tape recorders and photocopiers, and the concept of “Fair Use” and the increasing representation of Cultural works as software makes this concept less alien than it might be.

Cultural Use may simply be the local freedom to read and write (or record and playback, or see and paint, or receive and copy, or …), comparable to the local freedom to use a teletype. But in order for these freedoms not to be made hollow the other freedoms of Stallman’s Four Freedoms are also necessary.

It is important not to privilege a concept of “creativity” in or over Cultural Use, or to mistake Cultural Use for a denigration of creativity. And Cultural Use must be seen to include production as well as consumption, we are talking of the machinery of production of culture, which includes its products. With these caveats in mind the simple, atomic freedom of Cultural Use implicitly protects global freedom and creativity in general. It is this that makes it a useful concept for reform and for the protection of Free Culture.

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Free Culture

Thought For The Day

In my course I have known and, according to my measure, have co-operated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

– Edmund Burke, quoted in the front matter of “The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume One”.