Recently, I had
an opportunity to publicly discuss my
projects
around definitions of freedom for creative work with Lawrence Lessig
at a
workshop at
Wizards of OS. In particular, we talked about
my article
Toward a Standard of Freedom in which I advance a call
for a list of essential freedoms, a definition of free culture or
content, and a goal around which a social movement for free creative
works can be based.
At WOS, Lessig and I agreed that its likely that, eventually,
some
standard (or standards) of freedom will take hold. Like me, Lessig
seems to think that this is a good thing. We both agree that there
will be, and should be, competing definitions of freedom, competing social
movements, and a long conversation about what essential freedom
really to creative works is before we get there.
Our most fundamental differences seem to stem from a disagreement
about who gets to define freedom or, perhaps more precisely, who the
communities of producers should listen to in order to find out what
essential freedoms in the domain of different types of creative works
are.
Lessig is extremely reticent to make any claims about what essential
freedoms might be: he does not want to speak for creative communities
that he does not intimately understand. While he seems to be suspect
of any project making normative claims in this regard, he disagrees
most strongly with projects
like mine that offer definitions of
free content and expressions that are intended to be applied broadly
and outside of the explicit domain of the definition's initiators
recognized experience (in our case, online encyclopedias and
software).
Lessig explained that he trusts musicians -- and in particular,
Gilberto Gil, the progenitor of the
CC Sampling license -- when it
comes to defining essential freedoms for music. Similarly, he trusts
programmers -- and in particular, Richard Stallman -- when it comes to
defining essential freedom for software. Since Richard and I are less
accomplished, less well known, and less experienced musicians, Lessig
feels most comfortable erring in favor of Gil where there's a
disagreement between us about the scope of essential freedom for
music. While his is a convincing argument, I disagree with Lessig's
position for a series of reasons I'll try to discuss here.
First, it is important to remember that Gilberto Gil does not
represent all musicians. There are many artists and musicians who
support
my definition. There are many (and probably more if the
CC license usage statistics are any indication) who support Gil's
lower base-line. It's worth remembering that, even though we disagree,
both Gil and I are offering controversial and extreme
positions. Today, most creators think that giving away their work at
no cost, even non-commercially and barring derivatives, is crazy.
To illustrate why this is not a problem, we can look again to free
software. In the free software community, we see that Richard Stallman
does not speak for the programming community at large when it comes to
defining essential freedoms to code. In the mid-eighties, Stallman
spoke for himself and a tiny handful of like-minded others. Today he
speaks for many more but it's still a tiny fraction of all
programmers. It's hard to remember when you're down in the trenches
but the idea that software should be free remains a marginal and kooky
idea to this day. Due to the hard work of the free software movement,
many people have adopted Stallman's definition of essential freedom
for software and many more will. But it is not mainstream and it
didn't get here by being so.
Setting an ethical standard and a goal for a social movement should not
be about being popular. It should be about describing an ideal. It
should be about standing up to injustice. It should be about answering
the question, "what sort of world do I want to live in?" Not only is
this process not a popularity contest, it will, in all likelihood, stand
to make one very
unpopular.
Being respected or seen as an expert within a field will help with the
adoption of one's ideal. Programmers trusted Richards Stallman because
he'd written large parts of the very popular programming tools like GNU
Emacs and GCC. However, it wasn't from his experience in programming
that this insight into the importance of software freedom stemmed. It
was from his desire to be a good, ethical, neighbor and member of a
technical community. To this day, most great programmers continue to
disagree with Richard.
Second, I'm interested not only in talking about the ability of
authors to choose how their works are used but in the rights of
readers. You don't need to have a platinum album under your belt to
have an informed and important opinion about how music should be
heard, experienced and distributed. Lessig's current push for a
"Read-Write Culture" is very fixated on creators and re-mixers. That's
only one important piece of the community that frames and deals with
this problem.
Third, while I agree with Lessig that discussions around definitions
of free culture
must happen separately in each separate artist
community, I see several compelling reasons why a single definition of
freedom may be a very good idea both tactically and philosophically.
For example, it provides a common rallying cry around which different
creative groups can collaborate and it mirrors the common treatment of
different types of works in current IP systems. More importantly,
there are fundamental similarities between information goods and the
way they are created, distributed, and consumed on computers and in
digital networks. I've
highlighted this before in quoting Eben
Moglen on the ethics of creating artificial scarcity in goods with
zero marginal cost.
As a final note, it's worth stating that one doesn't need to feel that
all works should be free to support a definition of freedom. Richard
Stallman provides a great example of this. Stallman doesn't think that
works of opinion or works that are designed primarily to entertain
need to be free. However, he
does believe that the term "free"
should refer to a fixed set of freedoms so that he can take such a
position. Without a definition of "free," a position on what should or
should not be "free" is impossible.
I believe that freedom to distribute and produce information goods like
art and content and software are embedded in a set of freedoms and
rights for both the producers and consumers. I think that to some degree
(and quite probably a less extensive degree), Lessig agrees with this.
Unlike Lessig, I don't believe that one needs extensive expertise in the
creation of a particular type of creative good to make true statements
about what is ethical or unethical in the production, distribution, and
control of it. To use admittedly extreme analogies, you don't need to be
a slave owner (or slave for that matter) to say that slavery is wrong.
You don't need to be a farmer to make arguments against or in favor of
vegetarianism or in favor of free range animals. I don't believe you
have to be a technologist to claim that certain freedoms to technology
are essential. I don't believe that you need to be an musician
(successful or not) to make claims about essential rights to music.
I welcomed the conversations and challenges that Lessig offered and it
was encouraging to see agreement on the process of discussion and
debate going forward. After the workshop, Lessig suggested that we
continue the conversation. I look forward to doing just this in other
venues and in other ways.
Anything not claimed by the time I catch up will be Orphaned.
Apologies for feeding the “announcement by blog, not by mail” fire.
