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Free Culture

Copyleft Concepts 2

Volunteerism

A licence that tries to support non-creative interests by adopting them as part of its terms is volunteerist. Anti-military and human-rights licences are volunteerist. This is a form of instrumentalism.

WMIMWYIM

“What’s mine is mine what’s yours is mine”. Licenses or contracts that privilege upstream users or project hosts over downstream users and contributors, usually financially but sometimes attributionally.

Exploitation

A project or license that tries to keep or accrue value for a privileged party is exploitative. Or iniquitous. Good examples of this are WMIMWYIM contracts on media hosting sites and the use of noncommercial licensing. This is a form of instrumentalism.

Given the feedback I have received I’d like to be able to replace Instrumentalism with Volunteerism and Exploitation, but I don’t think they quite divide the concept between them.

Further feedback gratefully received.

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