Free content
Encyclopedia
Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork
, or other creative content
that meets the definition of a free cultural work. A free cultural work is one which has no significant legal restriction on people's freedom:
Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content
. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source
which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.
Free content encompasses all works in the public domain
and also those copyright
ed works whose license
s honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because copyright law in most countries by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control
over their creations, copyright content must be explicitly declared free, usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.
Though a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free, it can become non-free again if the copyright law changes.
Copyright is a legal concept, which grants the author or creator of a work legal rights to control the duplication
and public performance of his or her work. In many jurisdictions, this is limited by a time period after which the works then enter the public domain
. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be copied, modified, or publicly performed with the consent of the author, unless the use is a fair use
.
Traditional copyright control, limits the use of the work of the author to those who can, or are willing to, afford the payment of royalties to the author for usage of the authors content, or limit their use to fair use. Secondly it limits the use of content whose author cannot be found. Finally it creates a perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works, such as mashup
s and collaborative content
The public domain is a range of creative works whose copyright
has expired, or was never established; as well as ideas and factsThe copyright status of uncreative aggregates of basic data may differ by region, for the USA see Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service
, for Australia
, see Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems which are ineligible for copyright. A public domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished to the public, or no longer can claim control over, the distribution and usage of the work. As such any person may manipulate, distribute, or otherwise utilize the work, without legal ramifications. A work in the public domain or released under a permissive licence may be referred to as "copycenter".
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work. The aim of copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to reuse and, in many licensing schemes, modify content that is created by an author. Unlike works in the public domain, the author still maintains copyright over the material, however the author has granted a non-exclusive license to any person to distribute, and often modify, the work. Copyleft licenses require that any derivative work
s be distributed under the same terms, and that the original copyright notices be maintained.
A symbol commonly associated with copyleft is a reversal of the copyright symbol
, facing the other way; the opening of the C points left rather than right. Unlike the copyright symbol, the copyleft symbol does not have a codified meaning.
A symbol commonly associated with copyfree policy is a modification of the copyright symbol
, replacing the C with a capital F to produce the copyfree logo.
.
Technology has reduced the cost of publication and reduced the entry barrier sufficiently to allow for the production of widely disseminated materials by individuals or small groups. Projects to provide free literature and multimedia content have become increasingly prominent owing to the ease of dissemination of materials that is associated with the development of computer technology. Such dissemination may have been too costly prior to these technological developments.
have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all of the Creative Commons’ licenses are entirely free: their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Since February 2008, Creative Commons licenses which are entirely free carry a badge indicating that they are "approved for free cultural works". Repositories
exist which exclusively feature free material provide content such as photographs, clip art
, music, and literature,.
While extensive reuse of free content from one website in another website is legal, it is usually not sensible because of the duplicate content
problem. Website that is largely an exact copy of another website ranks way lower in search engines, so every successful project tries to present something different.
Free software
, often referred to as open source software, is a maturing technology with major companies utilising free software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.
Open source development models have been classified as having a similar peer-recognition and collaborative benefit incentives that are typified by more classical fields such as scientific research, with the social structures that result from this incentive model decreasing production cost.
Given sufficient interest in a given software component, by using peer-to-peer
distribution methods, distribution costs of software may be minimized, removing the burden of infrastructure maintenance from developers. As distribution resources are simultaneously provided by consumers, these software distribution models are scalable, that is the method is feasible regardless of the number of consumers. In some cases, free software vendors may use peer-to-peer technology as a method of dissemination.
In general, project hosting and code distribution is not a problem for the most of free projects as a number of providers offer them these services for free.
principles can be applied in engineering and technological applications, with projects in mobile telephony
, small-scale manufacture, the automotive industry, and even agricultural areas.
Technologies such as distributed manufacturing can allow computer-aided manufacturing
and computer-aided design
techniques to be able to develop small-scale production of components for the development of new, or repair of existing, devices. Rapid fabrication technologies underpin these developments, which allow end users of technology to be able to construct devices from pre-existing blueprints, using software and manufacturing hardware to convert information into physical objects.
In academic work, free works are still a niche phenomenon, owing to the difficulty and cost of maintaining a fully qualified peer review process. Authors may see open access publishing as a method of expanding the audience that is able to access their work to allow for greater impact of the publication, or for ideological reasons. Groups such as the Public Library of Science
and Biomed Central
provide capacity for review and publishing of free works; though such publications tend to be limited to fields such as life sciences. Some universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), have adopted open access publishing by default. In traditional journals, alternatives such as delayed free publications or charging researchers for open access publishing are occasionally used. Some funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health
, require academic work to be published in the public domain as a grant requirement. Open content
publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with information retrieval in research, as universities typically pay to subscribe for access to content that is published through traditional means whilst improving journal quality by discouraging the submission of research articles of reduced quality.
Subscriptions for non-free content journals may be expensive to universities themselves, particularly noteworthy when coupled to the fact that the content in the scientific articles are generated and peer-reviewed by the university staff themselves at no cost to the publisher. This has led to disputes between publishers and some universities over subscription costs, such as the one which occurred between the University of California
and the Nature Publishing Group
.
For teaching purposes, some universities, including MIT, provide freely available course content, such as lecture notes, video resources and tutorials. This content is distributed via internet resources to the general public. Publication of such resources may be either by a formal institution-wide program, or alternately via informal content provided by individual academics or departments.
Work of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...
, or other creative content
Content (media and publishing)
In media production and publishing, content is information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances...
that meets the definition of a free cultural work. A free cultural work is one which has no significant legal restriction on people's freedom:
- to use or modify the content,
- to distribute copies of the content,
- to distribute works derived from the content.
Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source
Alternative terms for free software
Alternative terms for free software have been a controversial issue among free software users from the late 1990s onwards. Coined in 1983 by Richard Stallman, "free software" is used to describe software which can be used, modified, and redistributed with little or no restriction...
which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.
Free content encompasses all works in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
and also those copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
ed works whose license
License
The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
s honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because copyright law in most countries by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
over their creations, copyright content must be explicitly declared free, usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.
Though a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free, it can become non-free again if the copyright law changes.
Traditional copyright
Copying
Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based only on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog forms of information, copying is only possible to a limited degree of accuracy, which depends on the quality of the...
and public performance of his or her work. In many jurisdictions, this is limited by a time period after which the works then enter the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be copied, modified, or publicly performed with the consent of the author, unless the use is a fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
.
Traditional copyright control, limits the use of the work of the author to those who can, or are willing to, afford the payment of royalties to the author for usage of the authors content, or limit their use to fair use. Secondly it limits the use of content whose author cannot be found. Finally it creates a perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works, such as mashup
Mashup (music)
A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
s and collaborative content
Public domain
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
has expired, or was never established; as well as ideas and factsThe copyright status of uncreative aggregates of basic data may differ by region, for the USA see Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service
Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 , commonly called Feist v. Rural, is an important United States Supreme Court case establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright...
, for Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, see Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems which are ineligible for copyright. A public domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished to the public, or no longer can claim control over, the distribution and usage of the work. As such any person may manipulate, distribute, or otherwise utilize the work, without legal ramifications. A work in the public domain or released under a permissive licence may be referred to as "copycenter".
Copyleft
Derivative work
In United States copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work .-Definition:...
s be distributed under the same terms, and that the original copyright notices be maintained.
A symbol commonly associated with copyleft is a reversal of the copyright symbol
Copyright symbol
The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, designated by © , is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings . The use of the symbol is described in United States copyright law, and, internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention...
, facing the other way; the opening of the C points left rather than right. Unlike the copyright symbol, the copyleft symbol does not have a codified meaning.
Copyfree
Copyfree is a play on the word copyleft as well as the word copyright, describing a practice that contrasts both of them of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributed copies and modified versions of a work imposed by both copyleft licensing and copyright itself. Where copyleft licensing generally requires that all derivative works be distributed under the terms of the same license, copyfree licensing generally requires only that the original work and direct modifications of it continue to be distributed under the terms of the same license. The Copyfree Initiative maintains the Copyfree Standard Definition, which establishes a specification to qualify a license for Copyfree Initiative certification of a copyfree license.A symbol commonly associated with copyfree policy is a modification of the copyright symbol
Copyright symbol
The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, designated by © , is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings . The use of the symbol is described in United States copyright law, and, internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention...
, replacing the C with a capital F to produce the copyfree logo.
Usage
Projects that provide free content exist in several areas of interest, such as software, academic literature, general literature, music, images, video, and engineeringEngineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
.
Technology has reduced the cost of publication and reduced the entry barrier sufficiently to allow for the production of widely disseminated materials by individuals or small groups. Projects to provide free literature and multimedia content have become increasingly prominent owing to the ease of dissemination of materials that is associated with the development of computer technology. Such dissemination may have been too costly prior to these technological developments.
Media
In media, which includes textual, audio, and visual content, free licensing schemes such as some of the licenses made by Creative CommonsCreative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all of the Creative Commons’ licenses are entirely free: their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Since February 2008, Creative Commons licenses which are entirely free carry a badge indicating that they are "approved for free cultural works". Repositories
Digital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
exist which exclusively feature free material provide content such as photographs, clip art
Clip art
Clip art, in the graphic arts, refers to pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively in both personal and commercial projects, ranging from home-printed greeting cards to commercial candles. Clip art comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However,...
, music, and literature,.
While extensive reuse of free content from one website in another website is legal, it is usually not sensible because of the duplicate content
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one web page, within the same web site...
problem. Website that is largely an exact copy of another website ranks way lower in search engines, so every successful project tries to present something different.
Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, often referred to as open source software, is a maturing technology with major companies utilising free software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.
Open source development models have been classified as having a similar peer-recognition and collaborative benefit incentives that are typified by more classical fields such as scientific research, with the social structures that result from this incentive model decreasing production cost.
Given sufficient interest in a given software component, by using peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
distribution methods, distribution costs of software may be minimized, removing the burden of infrastructure maintenance from developers. As distribution resources are simultaneously provided by consumers, these software distribution models are scalable, that is the method is feasible regardless of the number of consumers. In some cases, free software vendors may use peer-to-peer technology as a method of dissemination.
In general, project hosting and code distribution is not a problem for the most of free projects as a number of providers offer them these services for free.
Engineering and technology
Free content principles have been translated into fields such as engineering, where designs and engineering knowledge can be readily shared and duplicated, in order to reduce overheads associated with project development. Open designOpen design
Open design is the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation...
principles can be applied in engineering and technological applications, with projects in mobile telephony
Mobile telephony
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations , whereas satellite phones connect to orbiting satellites...
, small-scale manufacture, the automotive industry, and even agricultural areas.
Technologies such as distributed manufacturing can allow computer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing is the use of computer software to control machine tools and related machinery in the manufacturing of workpieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most common; CAM may also refer to the use of a computer to assist in all operations of a...
and computer-aided design
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...
techniques to be able to develop small-scale production of components for the development of new, or repair of existing, devices. Rapid fabrication technologies underpin these developments, which allow end users of technology to be able to construct devices from pre-existing blueprints, using software and manufacturing hardware to convert information into physical objects.
Academia
Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...
and Biomed Central
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a UK-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication. BMC, and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BMC journals are now published only online. BMC describes itself as the...
provide capacity for review and publishing of free works; though such publications tend to be limited to fields such as life sciences. Some universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT), have adopted open access publishing by default. In traditional journals, alternatives such as delayed free publications or charging researchers for open access publishing are occasionally used. Some funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
, require academic work to be published in the public domain as a grant requirement. Open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with information retrieval in research, as universities typically pay to subscribe for access to content that is published through traditional means whilst improving journal quality by discouraging the submission of research articles of reduced quality.
Subscriptions for non-free content journals may be expensive to universities themselves, particularly noteworthy when coupled to the fact that the content in the scientific articles are generated and peer-reviewed by the university staff themselves at no cost to the publisher. This has led to disputes between publishers and some universities over subscription costs, such as the one which occurred between the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
and the Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine...
.
For teaching purposes, some universities, including MIT, provide freely available course content, such as lecture notes, video resources and tutorials. This content is distributed via internet resources to the general public. Publication of such resources may be either by a formal institution-wide program, or alternately via informal content provided by individual academics or departments.
Governance
Widespread adoption of the Internet has made it feasible to distribute hitherto inaccessible government documentation directly to citizens from any location for minimal cost. This allows information on lawmaking, local and state government to be analysed by a government's constituents. Although previously information has been in the form of media releases for public relations purposes, documentation that may be of use to citizens and businesses has, in some jurisdictions, been mandated to be released by default. This is in contrast to laws such as the freedom of information act, or their local equivalent, which may make documentation available only on request, rather than mandate explicit publication. According to the Journal of Public Administration, such a stance has been cited as an aid to the reduction in complexity associated with government processes, as well as aiding a reduction in corruption.See also
- Definition of Free Cultural WorksDefinition of Free Cultural WorksThe Definition of Free Cultural Works is the definition of free content put forth by Erik Möller and published on the website .The first draft of the Definition of Free Cultural Works was published 3 April 2006 . Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Angela Beesley and others helped the project...
- Free and open source softwareFree and open source softwareFree and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
- Free art
- Free culture movementFree Culture movementThe free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
- Free software movementFree software movementThe free software movement is a social and political movement with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. The alternative terms "software libre", "open...
- Freedom of informationFreedom of informationFreedom of information refers to the protection of the right to freedom of expression with regards to the Internet and information technology . Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e...
- Libre knowledgeLibre knowledgeLibre knowledge is knowledge which may be acquired, interpreted and applied freely. It can be re-formulated according to one's needs, and shared with others for community benefit....
- Open Content AllianceOpen Content AllianceThe Open Content Alliance is a consortium of organizations contributing to a permanent, publicly accessible archive of digitized texts. Its creation was announced in October 2005 by Yahoo!, the Internet Archive, the University of California, the University of Toronto and others...
- Open publishingOpen publishingOpen publishing is a process of creating news or other content that is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want....
- Open-source hardware
- Permissive free software licencePermissive free software licenceA permissive free software licence is a class of free software licence with minimal requirements about how the software can be redistributed. This is in contrast to copyleft licences, which have reciprocity / share-alike requirements. Both sets of free software licences offer the same freedoms in...
- Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
Further reading
- OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: Giving Knowledge for free – The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. 2007, ISBN 926403174X.
External links
- Definition of Free Cultural Works – A definition of "free content" or "free cultural works" similar to the free software definition
- "Episodes of collective invention" (PDF) (Peter B. Meyer; August 4, 2003) – article on several U.S.-oriented historical examples of free content in technology
- Open Knowledge Definition – project under the aegis of the Open Knowledge FoundationOpen Knowledge FoundationThe Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that promotes open knowledge, including open content and open data. It was founded 24 May 2004 in Cambridge, UK...
which provides a definition of "open" suitable for content and data - What is free content? on WikiEducatorWikiEducatorWikiEducator is an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the non-profit Open Education Resource Foundation...