Ready for Primetime

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The Philosophy

Something I think is a really cool offshoot of the kind of thinking that characterized the free speech movement of the ‘60s is the Free culture movement, which supports the “permission culture.” From Wikipedia: “The movement objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely rejects the concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the movement also argue hinder creativity.” From these ideas came the Copyleft movement, which supports licenses that use copyright law itself to “remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions” (Wikipedia). It advocates for licenses such as the GNU GPL and Creative Commons licenses that include the Share-alike clause

Arduino

From the free software and permission culture came the open hardware movement as well, exemplified in the Arduino microcontroller platform. What makes the Arduino project unique is that its plans are licensed under a Creative Commons license, so anyone can take the design and improve upon it. Technically, the microcontroller is useful in a wide range of applications because of its inexpensive cost ($50 to buy, less to build yourself), extensibility, and support for standard open-source programming tools. It is useful for people from artists making interactive projects to teachers teaching electronics.

The potential for open hardware projects like this are awesome, and the business models that could be built around them are very compelling even though the designs are free. As this article from Wired discusses, the business model revolves around producing quality versions of the hardware while using the power of the community to improve the product, like any commercial open-source company does. Hardware projects with similar licenses to Arduino include the open-source car and to some degree, the telephony solution Asterisk and the self-replicating protyping machine the RepRap.

Who cares?

The permission culture has shown it is ready for prime time. Openness is here to stay, and technophiles have embraced it. Why don’t you?

See also:

• Arduino’s CC license
• Open-source Philosophy
• General info on open knowledge
• Can’t forget Linux – your friendly neighborhood open-source operating system!
• Google search for “open source hardware”

“Some Rights Reserved”

Amidst all our class discussion over the legality of free music file sharing there are two extremes.  Those who are in favor of free music file sharing through such applications as Lime Wire, and those who feel that full copyright laws should be put in place to ensure that the artist, record company, and all involved in the making of a track or CD are payed. There is in fact a company fighting for a balance, Creative Commons. Feel free to visit their website.

This five year old Massachusetts based corporation allows copyright holders to decide which rights they want to share with the public in an attempt to reward both the creators of the media and the listeners. When an company or individual wants to publish their work, they may sign up for one of six Creative Commons Licenses. The most basic license, the “Attribution License,” allows individuals to “remix, distribute, and build upon” a companies media as long as credit is given to the company or individual for the original work. The strictest license, or the “Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives” license, allows redistribution of a work, but requires the user to mention the creator, link back to the creator, and leave the work in its original state.

The applicant for a Creative Commons license is free to decide if he or she wants credit for the work, would allow others to make money off the work with or without permission, and make changes to the work, as long as they are shared publicly. Therefore, a modest balance is created between the artist and the user; the artist receives credit, and the user can listen to their work for free, aka. “some rights reserved.”