Paintr is at http://robmyers.org/paintr/
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Restricting the study, production, display, preservation or other uses of artworks removes the freedom of those involved in art and thereby damages the cultural, social and economic value of art. Where restrictions take the form of copyright, copyleft licences are a good way of restoring peoples freedom. The freedom of curators, critics and academics, collectors, audience, and artists to use software is part of their freedom to use software-based net art as art.
For media-based net art the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence is the best copyleft licence. For software based net art a different licence is required (and Creative Commons explicitly state that their licences should not be used for software).
The GNU GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that people use on their own computers, where it is "propagated" to them from elsewhere by downloading it or installing it from DVD. Software delivered to galleries or collections, or to other artists, counts as being propagated under the GPL, so the GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that will actually be delivered to its users.
Software accessed remotely on a server online does not count as being propagated, even if it is used as it would be locally but through a web interface. To handle this a variant of the GPL called the Affero GPL (AGPL) was created. When you use software over a network, for example through a web browser, the AGPL requires that you be able to acquire the source code of that software just as if you were using it locally under the GPL. The AGPL is therefore the best copyleft licence for software used over a network. This includes software-based net art.
The average piece of software-based net art will use a free operating system, and a free software scripting language, web server and web browser. It may use a free software database and many additional free software libraries of code as well. The difficulty of the artwork's conception or production does not provide an excuse for making it non-free any more than the difficulties of creating the far greater body of work that it build on did.
It is much easier to install and maintain software that is not restricted by its licence and that provides its source code. Art that takes the form of software must be installed and maintained to curate and preserve it. Critics, artists, students and audience can benefit from studying the source code of net art. Even if they don't fix bugs they can learn from it and maybe even appreciate it. And if the server goes down and you don't have a backup, someone else may and will be able to give you a copy back. These freedoms are all protected by the AGPL, giving a strong practical benefit to using it. This fact should be borne in mind when discussing the curation, archiving and preservation of net art as well as when discussing its production.
The support of people's freedom and the practical benefits to artists from supporting the curation, preservation and scholarship of their work provide strong reasons for making net art free software. Net artists can and should protect the freedom of the users of their software using the AGPL. See here for details of how to apply the AGPL to your work.
For media-based net art the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence is the best copyleft licence. For software based net art a different licence is required (and Creative Commons explicitly state that their licences should not be used for software).
The GNU GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that people use on their own computers, where it is "propagated" to them from elsewhere by downloading it or installing it from DVD. Software delivered to galleries or collections, or to other artists, counts as being propagated under the GPL, so the GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that will actually be delivered to its users.
Software accessed remotely on a server online does not count as being propagated, even if it is used as it would be locally but through a web interface. To handle this a variant of the GPL called the Affero GPL (AGPL) was created. When you use software over a network, for example through a web browser, the AGPL requires that you be able to acquire the source code of that software just as if you were using it locally under the GPL. The AGPL is therefore the best copyleft licence for software used over a network. This includes software-based net art.
The average piece of software-based net art will use a free operating system, and a free software scripting language, web server and web browser. It may use a free software database and many additional free software libraries of code as well. The difficulty of the artwork's conception or production does not provide an excuse for making it non-free any more than the difficulties of creating the far greater body of work that it build on did.
It is much easier to install and maintain software that is not restricted by its licence and that provides its source code. Art that takes the form of software must be installed and maintained to curate and preserve it. Critics, artists, students and audience can benefit from studying the source code of net art. Even if they don't fix bugs they can learn from it and maybe even appreciate it. And if the server goes down and you don't have a backup, someone else may and will be able to give you a copy back. These freedoms are all protected by the AGPL, giving a strong practical benefit to using it. This fact should be borne in mind when discussing the curation, archiving and preservation of net art as well as when discussing its production.
The support of people's freedom and the practical benefits to artists from supporting the curation, preservation and scholarship of their work provide strong reasons for making net art free software. Net artists can and should protect the freedom of the users of their software using the AGPL. See here for details of how to apply the AGPL to your work.
I'm currently working on a free software microblog bot licenced under the AGPL, which raises two questions. Firstly, who is a user of it? The AGPL only applies to users. And secondly, how can it provide its source code? The AGPL requries that source code be provided to users.
Reading a microblog post (a dent or tweet) does not make you a user of the software that generated it any more than reading a document produced using a word processor makes you a user of that word processor. But sending a message to the bot and it responding probably does count as a user interacting with software over a network.
Microblog users have user pages that could be used to provide details of how to get the source code for a bot. But that wouldn't be a way of providing those details specifically to users who are interacting with the software.
The solution is to allow people to send a message to the bot that contains a command which will cause the bot to respond to that message with details of how to get its source code. This both makes sure that the bot has a clear user relationship with the person requesting the code and provides a mechanism for that user to request the code. It's a minimal use relationship, as the use and the provision of source are the same. But it is use, it does trigger the AGPL, and it does satisfy the requirement that source be made available.
The message is a simple one - !source
The response is also simple, a short URL pointing to the source repository for the version of the code the bot is running (modified versions have to supply their own URL).
Send !source to a microblog bot and it will tell you where you can get its source code. I'll be implementing this in the microblog bot project that raised this question and I'll be implementing it in my art microblog bots as well. I recommend it for any microblog software that users can interact with, and as a way of ensuring that users can interact with the software and get its source code even if they otherwise would not.
(With thanks to Matt Lee and David Bausola.)
Reading a microblog post (a dent or tweet) does not make you a user of the software that generated it any more than reading a document produced using a word processor makes you a user of that word processor. But sending a message to the bot and it responding probably does count as a user interacting with software over a network.
Microblog users have user pages that could be used to provide details of how to get the source code for a bot. But that wouldn't be a way of providing those details specifically to users who are interacting with the software.
The solution is to allow people to send a message to the bot that contains a command which will cause the bot to respond to that message with details of how to get its source code. This both makes sure that the bot has a clear user relationship with the person requesting the code and provides a mechanism for that user to request the code. It's a minimal use relationship, as the use and the provision of source are the same. But it is use, it does trigger the AGPL, and it does satisfy the requirement that source be made available.
The message is a simple one - !source
The response is also simple, a short URL pointing to the source repository for the version of the code the bot is running (modified versions have to supply their own URL).
Send !source to a microblog bot and it will tell you where you can get its source code. I'll be implementing this in the microblog bot project that raised this question and I'll be implementing it in my art microblog bots as well. I recommend it for any microblog software that users can interact with, and as a way of ensuring that users can interact with the software and get its source code even if they otherwise would not.
(With thanks to Matt Lee and David Bausola.)
Furtherfield have published an essay by me on how digital artists can work to help improve Wikipedia's representation of digital art by becoming editors and participating in Wikipedia. There's been some good discussion of the article on mailing lists, and hopefully the article has demystified Wikipedia's editing process a bit for artists and encouraged people to get involved. Click here to read it -
An Artists' Guide For Editing Wikipedia
Wikipedians will notice a curious omission from the article - I don't mention NPOV. I did this deliberately as I didn't want to distract from discussion of the ideas that I have seen people on mailing lists having practical problems with. Which is why the article focusses on notability, sources and deletion. Hopefully it explains some of the rationale behind them and how to work with them to make better articles for Wikipedia, for society and for digital art.
An Artists' Guide For Editing Wikipedia
Wikipedians will notice a curious omission from the article - I don't mention NPOV. I did this deliberately as I didn't want to distract from discussion of the ideas that I have seen people on mailing lists having practical problems with. Which is why the article focusses on notability, sources and deletion. Hopefully it explains some of the rationale behind them and how to work with them to make better articles for Wikipedia, for society and for digital art.
Dave Gerard's comment on Foundation-L neatly encapsulates the problem with Wikimedia's actions and with the defences of them that I have seen so far, stating of the artists -
They're performance artists. This is more performance. They fooled the EFF into playing along.http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051509.htmlThe problem is that people's first amendment free speech rights are being dismissed because they are artists.The EFF wouldn't have had to "play along" if Wikimedia hadn't decided, despite the history of first amendment protection for non-commercial, critical and artistic use of trademarks by artists, that art is less deserving of protection as free speech than simple verbal abuse would be.
http://identi.ca/tag/wikimediahatesartI have a lot of respect for the Wikimedia Foundation, everyone I've met from it have been great people and I use their software and projects daily. I was proud to take part in the Wikipedia Loves Art event earlier this year. But as an artist I am disappointed and offended by Wikimedia's treatment of a contemporary art project.Whatever lawyers who charge for each letter they send out on your behalf may tell you, and whatever your opinion of contemporary art, there are strong precedents in the US supporting free speech under the first amendment for artists who use trademarks. To demand that artists transfer resources to a trademark holder or face legal action is therefore not just a chilling effect on free speech but legally shaky.The EFF, to their credit, point this out here -http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-And details on an artwork and lawsuit that provide an important precedent can be found here -http://www.barbieinablender.org/Wikimedia's response has been to disparage the concerns of the artists and the EFF -http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051505.htmlOther web sites have picked up on this, and are supporting the artists -http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-artists-for-fair-use.htmlhttp://freeculturenews.com/2009/04/23/wikipedia-accuses-web-site-of-trademark-violation/The problem with Wikimedia's over-reaching application of their trademark to the material detrement of artists is a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Wikimedia owe the artists and the EFF an apology. This behaviour really is beneath such an excellent organization.
Income - Packet-in-wiki.Great list of revenue strategies for musicians in the manner of "How To Get Paid For Copyleft Art".
Gnash is freeing web users from proprietary software and HTML 5 can free them from proprietary formats.The world wide web became invaluable to society and to the economy because it was based on open standards that were easy to use and even easier to copy and improve examples of. To protect the value that comes from this openness we must protect the freedom of computer users who access the web through software on their local computer.The biggest current restriction on web users' freedom is Adobe's Flash player and its "swf" file format. Flash has become an unavoidable part of using the web but neither Adobe's Flash player nor its swf file format are free. To make sure that web users' freedom is not compromised when they cannot avoid Flash, the free Gnash swf player has been written.Gnash currently supports Flash 7 and some of Flash 8. It will support Flash 9 later in 2009. If you develop websites to support Flash 7, please test them against Gnash and report any differences in behaviour to the Gnash project as bugs to help improve the Gnash player. Please also let users of your site know that they can use it with Gnash and where to find and install Gnash.As well as playing swf movies using free software there are free software authoring tools for swf files. For ActionScript there is MTASC, and for images and sound and other media there is swfmill. Other solutions are available. With the Emacs ActionScript mode and the GNU Autotools tool chain it is possible to write and compile Flash movies very efficiently.But it is increasingly possible to avoid using swf altogether. Modern web browsers support sophisticated graphics, sound, video and interaction using HTML 5, Javascript and "AJAX". For examples see sites such as this one -http://www.chromeexperiments.com.nyud.net/Rich interactive media experiences that would not have been possible online a few years ago can now be created using open standards. The quality and power of web standards multimedia has increased greatly in just the first few months of 2009. Do take a look at what can be done now, you will be pleasantly surprised.If you can do so, replacing Flash with HTML 5 and Javascript is better than supporting Flash with free software.It is important to use open standards and free software, but it is also important to pass on that freedom. The software that you write in JavaScript or ActionScript must also be free. Richard Stallman's new essay "The JavaScript Trap" explains how to do this for JavaScript, and it is possible to add a source download button or menu option to swf movies. Use Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licence (*not* NonCommercial-ShareAlike) for media, and the GNU GPL for scripts. Or, if you must, CC-BY and the X11 licence.In summary, make sure that any Flash swf movies you create work with Gnash and give any help you can to the Gnash project. Move new sites onto open standards such as HTML 5 and Javascript. And licence code and multimedia in a way that protects web users freedom.
I met so many new people at Libre Planet that I cannot remember all of them. I also finally met Mako, Evan, Kat, Mike and Asheesh physically for the first time, after six or seven years of online contact in some cases. But due to a combination of jet lag and convention duties I hardly got to talk to any of them. I must do better next time...
The world wide web is locked in at least in part to the proprietary Flash format. Replacements such as the HTML 5 canvas tag are emerging (although they have their own issues, see Stallman's new essay "The Javascript Trap"), but here and now Flash is an unavoidable part of the experience of the internet. The official Flash player is not free. So a free replacement must be written.That free replacement is the Gnash player. Rob Savoye gave a talk about how that project is progressing. He founded Cygnus solutions and worked on GCC before working on Gnash, so he's bringing plenty of hacking experience to the project.Rob explained that the next release of Gnash, later this year, will support Flash 9 and (in a bit of news of great interest to those of us in the UK) the BBC's iPlayer Flash interface.In a discussion session on Sunday someone asked about Flash authoring on GNU/Linux. There are tools both for compiling ActionScript (MTASC) and for compiling graphics and sound assets (swfmill). I developed the Flash version of draw-something using MTASC and Emacs for example.Whether you develop using Free Software or not, if you develop Flash 8 web sites please test them against Gnash and report any differences in behaviour as bugs. This will help the Gnash project help you with an even better Gnash player.The Gnash project, like many free software projects, needs financial support, so if you can help do get in touch with them.
