Wikimedia and the Free Culture Movement
December 11th, 2007While communication technologies have created a world flush with knowledge, creativity, and communication, works of culture are more tightly controlled and restricted today than ever before. A rapidly expanding copyright regime makes the use, modification and distribution of almost all documented human expression the exclusive right of its creator. Copyright today is automatic, extensive, and lasts for more than a century. Our culture today, is owned.
To counter this trend, writers, scientists, musicians, artists, and others have joined together to call for access to knowledge and the creation of a social movement for free culture — culture that is free as in freedom, if not necessarily as in price. In the short lifetime of the free culture project, Wikipedia has taken up a position as the most successful and important free cultural work. Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, provide everyone working toward a free culture with an example of what success might look like, hints for how they might achieve it, and the inspiration to continue.
Your support of the Wikimedia Foundation during this year’s donation drive does more than fund the foundation and its projects. It helps support and pave the way for the global movement for free culture that is already much larger than Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and wikis. The free culture movement, as Wikipedia demonstrates, offers a compelling vision of how we might improve the way we produce and consume information throughout our lives.
Free Culture
Under contemporary copyright laws, one can not legally copy an article for a friend, create a mash-up of a video, or sing Happy Birthday at a restaurant without asking for permission and, in most cases, paying for a license. Even more problematically, most cultural works are copyrighted by default at the moment of creation; only by explicitly disclaiming rights can works be used, copied, or modified. Through copyright, access to the most important cultural and scholarly resources are barred by tolls and restrictions. Legal access to most knowledge and culture is expensive — and prohibitively expensive for many. The creation of transformative or derivative works — like sampling and “mash-ups” — is frequently prohibited altogether.
Outraged by this situation, creators and consumers of culture have demanded increased freedom to distribute and modify creative goods as part of the free culture movement. While some leaders of the movement have resisted the statement of explicit goals, they have consistently positioned free culture in opposition to “high protectionist” approaches to copyright and intellectual property. Music, art, knowledge, and culture, free culture activists argue, should be widely accessible, flexible in the terms and restrictions placed on its use redistribution, and modification.
In part, the free culture movement is constituted by Utopians who imagine, describe, and espouse a world of what they feel is truly free culture. For these Utopians, free culture is a glimpse of ideal world where knowledge can be used, studied, modified, built upon, distributed, and shared without restriction. It is a world where creators are fairly and universally respected, attributed, and compensated. The major problem faced by free culture Utopians is that, in many cases, they do not know to move from contemporary cultural-economies based on copyright, ownership, control, and permission-asking to their ideal world.
Feeling that Utopianism is impractical, free culture’s pragmatists argue that it’s better to settle for the best that we can get by reforming the current copyright system and making incremental improvements. In particular, pragmatists argue that Utopian idealism eliminates the exclusivity on commercialization that helps support the production of many creative works. Better, they say, to settle for non-commercial use or verbatim copying than copyright’s default of “all rights reserved.”
The free culture movement, in this sense, is torn between the desire to create a world of truly free knowledge and the sense that in, for that knowledge, they have eliminated all viable financial and social systems to sustain creation of these works. The pragmatists compromise on a Utopian vision of a free world while the Utopians espouse what appears to many to be unrealistic.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia is a Utopian free culture project. Its goal is not only to collect knowledge; its goal is to do so freely. Wikipedia was created before it was clear that a free encyclopedia could or would succeed or that it would be better than the existing proprietary alternatives. Its goal was to be free, open, and unrestricted. Ironically, this idealistic commitment drove the creation of alternatives and redefined what was possible and realistic. In the free culture space, nothing demonstrates this better than Wikipedia. Nothing gives free culture’s Utopians as much hope.
Wikimedia is important simply in that it exists and in that is existing freely. As one of the most visited websites in existence, Wikipedia is an inevitable destination for any web searcher or surfer. It is a frequent response to the questions and curiosity of millions. But it is not just ubiquitous; it is better. It is no longer particularly controversial to suggest that Wikipedia is the single most impressive reference work ever compiled. It is one of the most important extant culture works in the world. And it is also free.
Early this year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board made an explicit commitment to a strong articulation of free culture goals. Through their resolution, the Wikimedia Foundation board made clear what was obvious to those involved in the project: Wikipedia has succeeded not in spite of the fact that the encyclopedia is free but because the encyclopedia is free. Wikimedia projects are valuable precisely because they have torn down barriers to contribution, use, and reuse.
Equally important for the free culture movement, Wikimedia has set an example and painted a picture of how a free culture might be achieved. In large part because of Wikimedia, wikis — once a marginal tool used by a small group of geeks — are a core technology in the production of free culture on thousands of wikis on myriad subjects. The technologies, social models, communication structures, and decision-making policies, procedures, and systems each provide inspiration and instructions for others in the broader free culture community. In each of these areas, Wikimedia projects provides a set of innovative models and practices that are compelling, successful and well documented.
Donating to the Wikimedia Foundation
While Wikipedia is free to use and is written without direct compensation to the vast majority of contributors, running Wikipedia is not without costs. Wikipedia is free as in speech, but not free as in beer — at least not for the Wikimedia Foundation. Financial support is necessary to power servers, sustain essential technological development, fend off legal threats, and ensure a healthy and productive community. This essential work is paid for by donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.
And yet, while these donations are targeted toward the support of Wikimedia and its member projects, their impact in the free culture movement is much larger and more important. As the visible symbol of free culture to the vast multitude of people who have never heard the term, Wikimedia is intimately tied up in free culture’s success. Wikipedia provides not only an example of how free culture is possible, it demonstrates how it can be done. It also shows that free culture — truly free culture — is better than the proprietary alternatives. Wikipedia has already paved the way for the success of hundreds of free culture projects. Its success in its struggles, including this fundraising drive, will help or hurt the immediate prospects of the entire movement for free culture.
Please, join me in donating to the Wikimedia Foundation this year. The fate of a much more than Wikipedia is riding on our generosity.
- Benjamin Mako Hill is an free software and free culture activist. He is an editor on English Wikipedia and Wikiversity and sits on the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board. He is an initiator of the Definition of Free Cultural Works and a director of the Free Software Foundation. By day, he works as a researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management and as a Fellow at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Wikipedia s so helpful………..
December 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
This blog post covers one of the things that is frustrating about Wikimedia projects..
Too many people think the WMF projects are free as in beer.
This is not the case.
Do NOT mix up contributing to WMF with “crowdsourcing”. There is a great graphic somewhere on Wikimedia Commons which, although not neutral, illustrates what that is and allows you to infer why Wikipedia isn’t crowdsourcing.
For those who don’t know, crowdsourcing is where you set up a website that your customers provide content for. You just manage the servers and rake in the money from advertising and the like. The image on Wikimedia commons shows a box called “website” surrounded by “suckers” who give you the content you make money off.
For a start, the Wikimedia foundation isn’t for-profit. It should not be confused with Wikia which is a separate entity. Wikia (to my knowledge) doesn’t run fundraisers and makes its money from advertising. Wikipedia, on the other hand, prides itself on no adverts.
I could write a post as long - if not longer - than the one I’m responding to about why you should support the Foundation. Simple examples like being a blogger who can link to an article on something you mention - it adds value to your own work, but - as this post illustrates - you were freely given the information and are freely able to share it with your readers. There is no obligation to ask your readers to pay for the information, nor for you to do so. However, think of what you’re getting. Can you feel good about giving $10-20 to help? Can you, in good conscience, ask your readers to give the same? Have you ever won a bet or an argument by referencing Wikipedia?
Sure, Wikipedia is “Free”, but unlike the free hosting your ISP gives you it has to pay for the bandwidth and servers to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of the human race. So, support WMF - the charity that is asking (not demanding) you help keep this resource online.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Hello,
I have a BA in psychology and would absolutely love to write some stuff for wikipedia in order to brush up on some of the recent psychological research in the past two years. Plus I am an unemployed bum right now, so I have both time and brains. HA ha. Ok, well if somebody Could get back to me at my email above, I would love to learn about this web site.
Dale E. Johnson II
December 11th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Free culture is definately important!
December 11th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
WMF - World Monetary Fund? strange coincidence. -both are Multinational entities too.
Many non-profits have been corrupt - suffered from a lack of transparency. It matters little whether the profit is gotten by the supplier of the non-profit or the supposedly “non-profit” itself.
I was really surprised by unhappybirthday.com
Sincerely,
Micael Cimet Dattoli
December 11th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Re: The Free Culture Movement.
As with other “free” services, those who promote them are not usually the ones paying for them. How many of the world’s writers, artists and musicians have signed up for this movement, willingly agreeing to give away their work…to whose control? A government panel? A panel of self-styled intellectuals headed by Wikimedia appointees? Not too many, I would guess.
If you can socialise intellectual property, why stop there? How could it be equitable to remove ownership of their work from one group? Why not take over all production and move to a truly Utopian, Marxist system, for that is what you are proposing. Some immediate questions arise which are stated, but not answered in your appeal.
1. How do you propose to “fairly” compensate writers and artists after ownership of their work through copyright law is taken from them, presumably in most cases, without their consent?
2. How will information providers get funds from advertisers that permit them to operate if they have nothing unique to offer?
3. What writer, artist or musician would agree to have his/her work corrupted by selective addition, deletion or rearrangement by others? This is surely the first step on the way to chaos.
4. Re (3)above. Presumably you will arrange for all defamation law to be immediately repealed.
5. National security laws will have to be repealed also. Otherwise, any terrorist will be able to rewrite your comments without attribution and YOU, the original writer, will end up in jail in most countries.
6. Perhaps (5) is one of your goals as well. Who would benefit? It would be more honest if you stated all your aims alongside the apparently benign “Utopian”goals that you acknowledge.
December 11th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
As a content creator and business owner, it’s difficult for me to fully support the concept of totally free content without understanding the risks to my business. I agree it would be great for the world if our database of 15,000 medical illustrations and animations were absolutely free to use for education and non-commercial projects. But would I be able to pay my employees to maintain the artwork, databases, meta data, software, etc.? Is a donation only model sustainable below a certain size?
Perhaps if I knew how much money Wikimedia makes from donations as a ratio to the number of its viewers, I could determine whether my business would survive by giving away its content. Are those data available anywhere?
I think most content authors can support the idea of making the world a better place by donating their works for education, but until the risks/rewards are more quantifiable, there will be a lot of resistance.
December 11th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
The more you give the more you live, give give be always giving, for he who gives not is not living
December 11th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
hello, to be honest i’ve never really used ‘wikipedia’ before, but have just arrived in China where a friend has just shown me to the Wikipedia site with ‘information’ regarding Tiananmen Square. While it does provide the cultural significance & history of the place, when trying to follow the link with information on the protests & subsequent massacres of 1989, the link is forever ‘busy’ or unable to be reached. It just seemed ironic to me that, on this very same page, was an ad for the knowledge seeking folk of the world to provide money to Wikipedia to aid them in providing free information. It would be interesting to know how much money changes hands for the censorship of such material. Maybe none, but the censorship still remains….
just thought that was interesting.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
“Money can be checked and balanced, but knowledge is forever.”
December 11th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I was first attracted to this movement by following the progress of the Public Library of Science and Linux Open Source computer software projects, and certainly, The Web itself by which we read these statements. In these I see the germ of a world vastly different than what we see today, a way of life and looking at our places in it, not in terms of how we can make a buck by building forts and fences around everything of value, but of freely sharing those values and their material extentions with the human family. I have benefited from the present copyright laws by having authored books and magazine articles throughout my adult life, yet I consider 100 years’ exclusivity over their content to be far too much to have been granted.
The mention of “free beer” is apt — a significant change must also occur in the public attitude toward responsibility if the envisioned New World Order is ever to come to fruition. There was a time when one could trade the fruits of husbanded poultry directly for a pair of shoes for the son or daughter of the poultry keeper. In this exchange there was a willingness, and indeed, an inner feeling of equality with the shoemaker, to “balance the books.” With each use of Wikipedia one feels an inner desire to balance the exchange with or by some act of contribution, whether one admits it on the spot or not. This in my opinion is an inner natural urge to be just, that no one nor governing body owes the individual a “free lunch” of unlimited duration. It just might be a blossoming of this inward natural sense of justice that will bring about a sea change in human relations on many levels.
The above-named movements exist in embryo today. All things living begin that way. Whether or not the embryo will attain maturity while there are forces exerting efforts to slow its progress will depend upon those among us who listen to the inner voice of reason while envisioning how much more enjoyable life can become for everyone by willingness to change course in this century. There is a joy in accepting responsibilty for one’s presence in the world society of its citizens, not the least of which is accompanied by the retreat of obligation to a minor role. We do not need to be “sold” on the propositions presented by these movements, because the scales of justice are visible from within.
–WTB
December 11th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Only issue I have is that the respect of the original idea and of the originator of that idea must not be lost in what is considered free. As long as the subject matter is not being passed as your own when it’s clearly not then I’m fine with data being “free”.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Suckers? Free? The more you give the more you live, give give be always giving, for he who gives not is not living????? Censorship.Altering link addressess.Removal of real information. Thats worth paying for eh? I repeat. Suckers.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Industry people worried about there content being sent around for free and other aguments attached, should be paying industry software makers to prevent this infringement on their rights. They are taking the easy way out and making lots of money but don’t want to pay it out like us. People created the internet and therefore it, and it’s contents are the people’. These industry people had no concern with the infringement to the extent they have now b/c the technology wasn’t foreseen by them to be able to do what people can do today.
Laws were fine then and are still now involving copyright. If the laws are implemneted then think how many software companies will lose out. The internet is not a scapegoat for industry people to get off that easy.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I think the whygive subdomain is living in disneyland.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:23 am
In my occupation as a radio broadcaster, I use Wikipedia quite often. And while free culture sounds admirable, I am not comfortable with the idea of giving up copyrights. Nor would I send a monetary gift out to a utopian point beyond any accounting.
Rather, I’ll donate to pressing local needs, and contribute to the pool of free culture in my free time–for free.
And, if you are ever out in Portland, I’ll buy you a beer.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:11 am
With his/her third point, apparently D. Cordes has conveniently forgotten a couple little works called the Odyssey and the Iliad. I don’t necessarily agree with every logical conclusion of that statement - I’m just saying.
December 12th, 2007 at 2:00 am
D.Cordes: I’m very confused. Why are you conflating Utopian positions on free culture with Marxism or socialism? I write free software, write free books, contribute to Wikipedia. I also make a very comfortable living, competing in the market, through and because of this work. It’s how I get all my customers for my consulting and contracting business and it’s why people buy paper copies of my books.
Neither Wikipedia, free culture nor free software is Marxist! It’s simply the best way to compete!
December 12th, 2007 at 2:00 am
For ideas/concepts around ‘donation only’ intellectual property usage, see: the band Radiohead’s most recent release on=line and free or donation. For ideas/concepts on gift economies, as opposed to the usual college economics notion of exchange or reciprocity, see anthropologist David Graeber’s article on Marcel Mauss. Mass social movements start in the most unlikely of places …
December 12th, 2007 at 2:13 am
Isn’t it said that “the truth shall set you free”? Thruth & Freedom seem to be intertwined.
I like the idea of subjecting whatever your idea, or “truth” is, to the open marketplace. It is how idea’s and knowledge are exchanged in the scientific community, isn’t it?
The social community, the public knowledge base should be a free experiance and expression as well. I’m all for a WikiWorld with regards to exchanging ideas. I’ll be contributing.
“Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.” ~ Gerard K. O’Neill, 2081
Well said! Mr O’Neill!
Kerry
December 12th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Hello there,
Well after reading a brief description if the FCM i realize what a great and distinguished era this would be if this were somehow to come true..
But like the saying goes “Greed will consume us all..™ ®” -(insert credit here).
But if, ah yes the mighty “If”, this were to come true were would the ever money hungry men and women go to get their money. Well that is no easy question to answer, would the get jobs and work our entire lives like the rest of us? Or would they seek out more elusive ways of pinching money off us, one can only guess.
I see this as a good thing,(we get to watch any movie anytime), and a bad thing,(we get to look at any blueprint anytime).
December 12th, 2007 at 4:22 am
“For example, should we have an official position on the free culture movement? Wikimedia is part of that movement, but I would say this is so because of practical considerations, rather than ideological ones. It was assumed that people would be more willing to contribute to wikipedia if they knew their work could not be seized and owned by someone else, and it was decided that all contributions would be licensed accordingly.” — Tim Shell
“Wikipedia does not have an official policy about the propriety of the institution of intellectual property. We should not attempt to advocate a policy whereby we try to impose on other Wikipedians the view that intellectual property is wrong.” — Larry Sanger
December 12th, 2007 at 4:40 am
At the beginning of this schoolyear, my university professor compiled a number of Wikipedia articles relating to the field of linguistics and distributed them in a 30 page packet for us to read for homework. Throughout the course of the semester, instruct us to check Wikipedia in regards to certain questions that were posed by students. I pay private school tuition fees to be taught by Wikipedia.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I’ve actually chosen not to make a donation this year, precisely because of this increasing fanaticism about “Free Culture”, to the detriment of the encyclopedia’s quality and usefulness.
Open source is great, free content is great, online collaboration is great. But these should be *tools* that Wikipedia and the Foundation use to reach their educational goals; they are not goals in and of themselves.
When the content of Wikipedia suffers for the sake of ideology, the ideology needs to be toned down.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Considering the alternatives to researching anything, Wikipedia definitely gets five stars in my book. As an information addict, I find myself at this website almost as much as my favorite blog site and my e-mail. After, in the past, owning CD-ROMs of encyclopedias with limited and definitely not up-to-date information, this is an invaluable resource. And also, being a computer geek, I know such resources cannot operate without some funding. A reasonable CD-ROM encyclopedia could cost $50 or more, and would have to be replaced yearly for the up-to-date information this site supplies, so from a financial standpoint, donating $10 or $20 to keep their servers running and on-line seems to be a minimal expense compared to the vast amount of information that will be kept available for such a nominal request.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Why does this Free Culture Movement necessitate paying the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (and her support staff) over $500,000 in 2008, according to the Foundation’s own budget objectives? Why does attorney Mike Godwin merit a $180,000 budget for 2008? If free labor is so wonderful, why are these people being paid more than 99.5% of American workers? I keep asking this question, but it never gets answered.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Unfortunately I think this is a free movement in name only. There is way too much unaccountability with oversight, and other admins who ban wantonly. Not to mention all the deleting going on, and the limitless arcane beuracacy. Wikipedia is headed in the wrong direction, and most likely has ‘jumped the shark’.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Responses to people, because i like to respond rather then be insightful
Dale E. Johnson II: Your email isn’t published in the comments. However Try reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcome for some hints
Alex: Umm Wikipedia is supposedly blocked by the great firewall of china because the chinese government doesn’t like it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China
D.Cordes:
People willingly giving up control to some big evil power: No ones done that (While some people have, but thats not within the free culture movement). Generally people just say others can use this work however they please, but still retain control over it. If they want to release more rights, they can do that.
in response to become communists: No one is saying that. While I’m sure some people like such systems, others don’t, and its really outside of the scope of the free culture movement.
In response to point 1: Different people with in the free culture movement have different ideas about what is ideal. While some people feel abolishing copyright outright is a good idea, some do not. I personally think copyright is a good thing, just not extending 70 years after you die. Most people IMHO can get the money out of their work in say ten years, especially in the internet age. If stuff entered into pd after ten years, I think that would be the best of both worlds, people get the rewards for their intellectual toil, and then others can build on it, and make it better for the good of the whole after that as its not locked up unused in copyrights for ever and ever.
Point 2: Perhaps they should be unique then. Just because you don’t own the copyright doesn’t mean you can’t do novel things with the work. Look at wikipedia. The wikimedia foundation owns zero of the copyright. Some random person can take the wikipedia database, set up an identical encyclopedia elsewhere as long as they call it something different and have a different logo (trademarks). Not only that, people have done that, and none of the clones really work, as they don’t present anything new. (However theres a couple that do do things differently, and they get some people. Answers.com combines wikipedia results with other encyclopedias results, and some people like that and use it). In addition, my personal belief is that a lowered (not no) copyright term would work best in an ideal world.
point 3: While I just flat out disagree with you on that one. First off, people would be given credit, and if a work got modified, it would say something like a modified version of so and so’s blah. As such people would know its not the original. What one person may hate, others love. I belive that some rock music was modified versions of really old classical works. The people who wrote the works probably would hate the rock music, but the modern world loves it. Anyways the best counter-argument for this point I could think of is the fact that many artists do currently release there works as such, and great madness hasn’t happened.
Point 4: No one ever said that
Point 5: First off, Attributation is a right that the free culture movement belives should be preserved. No one ever said anything about getting rid of attribution. Second, a terrorist could do that now (If the person is killing innocent people, do you really think he will obey copyright laws?), would you go to jail?
Point 6: Muhuhuhu! and then when everyone is distracted, we’ll take over the world. Seroiusly - what is that point?
Anyways sorry if I rambled on a bit
-bawolff
December 12th, 2007 at 7:55 am
WIKIPEDIA IS HELPFUL TO ME FOR PREPARING SEMINARS AND I CONDUCT VERYWELL.SO I THANKSFULL TO WIKIPEDIA.MY FRINDS ALSO USING WIKIPEDIA TOGET KNOWLEDGE.SO I AM THANKFULL TO WIKIPEDIA.
December 12th, 2007 at 8:38 am
@Gregory Kohs: It appears that you still haven’t gotten over having been banned for abusing Wikipedia to promote commercial enterprises?
The question should be the other way around: Why does Wikipedia need so much less paid labor than any other top 10 web site? Why is more than 99% of work on Wikimedia projects done by volunteers, and less than 1% so unattractive that they needed to hire somebody for it?
December 12th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Alex: Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China
December 12th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Knowledge’s greatest treasure seen so far. Every content from different spheres continues to enrich and widen our horizons. Somtimes provide various angles from which a partcular concept can be seen. It provides the information with such interesting links & pictures that even dull subjects seems worth reading.
Good job done….Keep up the good work
December 12th, 2007 at 9:37 am
@ D.Cordes :
not afraid of a bit of rhetoric there, are you? Never before has it been so clearly laid out for me how free culture leads to terrorism. Dare I suggest you start reading here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content
@ Mako : great post, but it needs more links, for the uninitiated.
December 12th, 2007 at 10:12 am
I’m not sure which amazes me more, the fact that millions upon millions of people have created these projects almost from scratch or the amount of effort and determination that has gone into keeping them all afloat. The Wikimedia Foundation gives an immense amount of information to us at great financial expense, so it’s the least we can do to relieve them of some of that burden.
December 12th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Because the 99% are idiots.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Providing all sorts of information and content to the world and gaining nothing material in return may seem idiotic to some, but I think I speak for a lot of Wikimedians when I say that the satisfaction of doing it is enough. If people have an urge to do a certain amount of good for others, surely that’s not particularly idiotic?
December 12th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Here is one “idiot” (one of the 99%) who treasures knowledge above money. Some build libraries… Others try to set them on fire (or install a toll both in front of them and therefore a restriction). We (the 99%) are asset of the site and (at least me) will disappear if the payed professionals fail to keep the site protected from money minded haters.
December 12th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
HaeB, you say that I “abused Wikipedia to promote commercial enterprises”. I (and many others) say that I “assisted Wikipedia by adding short, NPOV articles about notable commercial enterprises that were heretofore missing from Wikipedia”. You know, companies like Arch Coal — the second-largest coal-mining operation in the United States. I am curious to know exactly HOW Arch Coal’s bottom line was improved by its “promotion” in Wikipedia. I suppose you think a bunch of coal-burning power plant managers saw the Wikipedia article and said to themselves, “Holy crap, that’s a company we should buy more coal from, since they have an article on Wikipedia!”
So, it’s not so much that I haven’t “gotten over” being banned by Wikipedia for fighting the logical fight to allow paid editing (nothing in the Wikimedia Foundation’s charter says that contributions must be “voluntary”)… What I haven’t gotten over is how shallow-minded observers like yourself can so faithfully butcher the truth about what happened to MyWikiBiz. Need I remind you that Jimbo Wales told us exactly how to operate our business in compliance with GFDL guidelines, we were doing exactly that, and yet he flip-flopped his position about our business when he decided that his solution was embarrassingly in conflict with the developing WP:COI policy.
Oh, and, thanks for NOT answering why an Executive Director and her staff on a “Free Culture” project requires over $500,000 in annual funding. Change the subject, change the subject — Wikipediots seem to be experts at that.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Free Culture, in a nutshell:
1) An artist creates a work of art and wishes to sell it. They don’t want you to change the work or sell it yourself, they want to be the sole source of the work so they can feed themselves.
2) Free Culture/Open Source/Etc people step in. Information must be free, after all, and what is art but a collection of data - information? The Mona Lisa has been rendered digitally millions of times, statues can be rendered digitally quite easily, MIDI has reduced artistic perfomance to simple datastreams for decades, now, and books themselves are nothing more then text data. All art is information, and Free Culture insists all art be free and modifiable by anyone who wants.
3) The work is distributed on the internet ten million times before lunch, instantly becomes worthless, and the artist goes back to pumping gas for a living instead of creating more art.
4) Insert/Replace the word ‘artist’ with ‘author’, ‘musician’, ‘historian’, ’scientist’, or whatever your favorite profession is. All the world is simply data - information, wanting to be free. And there are billions of people out there who are quite happy to make it free, whether the creator wishes it to be or not.
Welcome to the 21st century.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Art brings imagination to life
December 12th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
@Gregory Kohs
You’d have a valid point, if the Free Culture referred to money. As stated in the article, it does not. It refers to freedom, as in expression and speech and whatnot. You know, all that stuff in the Bill of Rights. What, never heard of it? Neither has the Federal Government…
December 12th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
[...] Unfortunately, Wikipedia is taking this even further in their latest fund-raising ploy : Give us money and we’ll give you “free” information. [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
To be honest I don’t understand why you hare found rising from the citizens when you could simply apply for a call at the Eu commission asking for a grant, or ask for money to the Banks Foundation or others public and private big donators.
The Eu commission gives every year more then 20 mil of euros in grants to develop IT technologies, multilingual and multi-content projects. My office is found rising for our clients 5 mil of euros every year in this field.
From my point of view, if the “culture” should be free the effort of the users should be only writing the web site content.
I wish to have a feed back. regards Miriam
December 12th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Gregory, it seems that not getting answer to you question frustrates you. So I would like to offer one to you: besides the fact that Executive Director and her staff on a “Free Culture” project are human beings and need to eat and feed their families too, they are doing work which is IMPORTANT, at least to me and, as I believe, many of us “Wikipediots”, so they should not spend their creativity on dull things like thinking how to pay bills etc.
December 12th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
[...] The Fieryangel wonders on the Wikipedia Review blog about the nature of “free” in Wikipedia business. He kicks off from the recently launched Wikipedia fundraising drive that calls to give us money and we’ll give you “free” information. [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Gregory Kohs makes a very valid point here in my opinion. My own inclination to donate money to wikipedia/wikimedia is directly proportional to my trust in these entities. The trust issue really boils down to this: Is wikimedia/wikimedia an organization that furthers my goal of freedom of information, or is it a feeding hook for the staff to rake in money? Maybe I should simply stop donating money and spend time writing articles, instead spending these resources on publishing information on a website under my own control instead?
I can’t say I know what an Executive Director does, but I do know that $500 000 is a heapload of money when the principal output of the project is a website. This brings us to the next question: What SHOULD wikipedia/wikimedia focus on? Should it focus exclusively on maintaining wikipedia.org, or start funding computers in third-world countries? This also directly affects my inclination to donate money to the relevant entities.
Maybe in the future we will see free information, but several “distributors” of it? If you don’t mind advertisements, donate to “bizwiki.com”. If you would like your money to maintain a fast web encyclopedia and ignore any projects involving distributing copies of the information on physical media to third-world countries, then choose “cheapopedia.org”. And if you like your good’ol ‘pedia just like today, donate to wikipedia.org…
Just the mad ravings of a madman I guess, but hey, it’s free ravings!
December 12th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I’ve been using Wikipedia for a really long time now. [I'm 13.] It’s been really helpful, but not always authoritative. For example I was looking through the random articles section, and there was an article that was called “1337 h4×0r$”. >__<
December 12th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Wow Happy Birthday is copywrighted still … that explains why restaurant staff use a dif. tune and words.
I’ve thought before that everything should go to public domain after 7 years just like patents. That’s pretty ridiculous how long media stays protected.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:05 am
The very fact that your organization solicits donations underlines the reality that nothing is free. The only questions become who is paying and who’s getting paid.
The volunteer force editing Wikipedia are the very reason I don’t allow my students to use it as a source in their papers. It is good for little else besides a portal to credible sources, in the cases where articles are cited.
That doesn’t make Wikipedia any less of a commodity that has value in the marketplace, and those for whom it has value will certainly donate and contribute. But the flaws in the resource certainly illustrate that you get what you pay for.
My labor as a writer has its own value as a commodity, and I refuse to recognize your right to strip me of my ownership of that labor. If we try to turn our artists into slaves of the free culture movement, we may find that while culture is free, it’s become awfully scarce.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:50 am
There’s a typo on the first line counting down from the “Free Culture” header. It reads “[...]or sing Happy Birthday at a restaurant with asking for permission[...]” instead of “without”, which, in this case, I think would make more sense.
Other than that, I must say this is a great article and a great blog. Keep up the good work.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:27 am
“…or sing Happy Birthday at a restaurant with asking for permission…”
Typo alert. Should be: WITHOUT asking for…
[Fixed. -- Erik Möller]
December 13th, 2007 at 4:03 am
To all those corporate types spewing long strings of doubts or questions on “giving everything away for free”
free culture is not about that.
It is about establishing rules which separate the commercial realm from the personal and academic.
before the internet revolution copyright was at least tolerable because the limitations both legally technologically up to that point made enforcement of copyright against entities below a certain size prohibitively costly.
Extensions to rightsholder power changed this dramatically.
The DMCA’s C&D and anti-circumvention clauses mean a PRIVATE COMPANY can currently violate the first, fourth, and fifth amendments of the US constitution without due process and with complete impunity. Socially this is HUGE, economically this is EVEN WORSE… but a mere synopsis of the implications could fill 20 pages, the point is….
the Free Culture movement is about restoring balance to this mess, not “giving it all away for free”.
being part of the free culture movement doesn’t require photocopying wikimedia’s business plan.
If you are a profit seeking company but still notice, like many firms do, that copyright is taking more from society or business than it is giving, then help lobby for reforms, or contribute to public interest firms who do.
This is not a black and white issue. giving to these causes because copyright law is too powerful does not mean copyright law will suddenly vanish. Rick Boucher’s FAIR USE act would be a great help in this regard if you would put in a word to your local congressman.
I currently have a net income of -25,000 (yes, negative) per year, and I could spare a few bucks for wikipedia.. so I’ll ask the reader.. have you hit that donate button yet?
December 13th, 2007 at 5:04 am
HI to all reader!
It is me Mohammad salim khan.
I would like to say that Wikimedia is really a great and useful site.
thanks
December 13th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Wikipedia needs our help. In response to the comments above…
“How do you propose to “fairly” compensate writers and artists after ownership of their work through copyright law is taken from them, presumably in most cases, without their consent?”
Well, what artist makes a work of art with any other intention than another’s or their own enjoyment of it? Superficial compensation has nothing to do with it.
“How will information providers get funds from advertisers that permit them to operate if they have nothing unique to offer?”
Funds? Permit them to operate? The fatty acids and calories in your body permit you to operate, if you think it’s anything else, congratulations, you’re DELUDED.
“What writer, artist or musician would agree to have his/her work corrupted by selective addition, deletion or rearrangement by others? This is surely the first step on the way to chaos.”
If their work gets corrupted, it’s no longer their work. When they make something, it will be recognized and documented. Any “improvements” or alterations to a copy of it will exist soley for the benefit of the individual operator. That’s not called chaos, it’s called freedom.
“Presumably you will arrange for all defamation law to be immediately repealed.”
Survey says: Yes. Private defamation, anyway. Stop thinking of works of Art as definite, completed entities. A peice of Art that is good enough by public estimation nobody will want to improve.
“National security laws will have to be repealed also. Otherwise, any terrorist will be able to rewrite your comments without attribution and YOU, the original writer, will end up in jail in most countries.”
Thus the need to combat terrorism. And for that matter, government. Or maybe you’d like to let them dictate EVERYTHING we do. Better yet, let’s stop writting anything! That way we can get the extremists to focus on what really matters: Blowing people up. Yeah!
“Perhaps (5) is one of your goals as well. Who would benefit? It would be more honest if you stated all your aims alongside the apparently benign “Utopian”goals that you acknowledge.”
Oooo, Mr. Insinuation, just what kind of an argument are you making? Have you ACTUALLY confused freedom with terrorism? Well, I’ll be honest at least. I can’t speak for Wikimedia (or can I…?), but yes, Wikipedia is socialist. And it is succeeding wildly. In fact, it is the perfect example of why anarchism is the ultimate utopia. And does some executive need $500,000 in funding? So? Money is useless unless you think it’s not, so the only danger there is that Wikimedia itself might be marginalized and bought out some way or another, which, admittedly, is a valid concern.
So, in conclusion, Wikipedia is the consumation of cyber-communism, and it’s success will usher in an era of REAL communism/anarchism/socialism/feudalism/anythingotherthanaristocracy! Ooh look out, I’m a terrorist!
Seriously, Wikipedia’s need for money is disgusting, but only because all money is disgusting. Wake up and smell the progress.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:17 am
The notion that the internet is a legitmate medium for publication of copywriteable material undermines the original spirit of the web; a medium for the free exchange of data and ideas. It’s important to remember the biggest software giant got its start packaging public domain, government paid programming. MS has been under attack from hackers is evidence of the resentment of its proprietary as well as controlling nature and greed. Commercial versions of Linux have started attracting similar attention in contrast to its former freedom from interference. The music industry’s exploitation of the internet as a publishing medium was challenged by some young free marketers who created Napster; the model for all peer to peer networks. The courts and congress sided with the industry in reprehensible precedents that further compromised the freedom of the net. There have always been a large group of people who feel that the airways and “electronways” should be free of tariff and rules. But when television broadcasting moved into the pay to view mode the sheer power of the industry overrode the freedom of the air. This paved the way for music publishing on the internet. In the future, if we can’t roll some of this back, we might start seeing taxes on radio and television sets with government snooping vans patrolling the streets like they have in Germany. If we don’t fight to reverse these trends now we can look forward to more police state tactics in the future. My attitude is if I can catch it, its mine. That should be yours as well. There’s a strong contingent of controll feaks in this country who truly fear freedom. They use safety, security, child pornography, drugs, anything that sells at the moment, to promote more control. We’ve always had to fight them and they have alot of power today. They elected an idiot President and they maintain him in spite of his stupidity.
December 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am
This discussion about intellectual property on the internet is another chapter in an old dilemma - how to work to make “another world” possible, while being able to eat and pay the rent in the world as it is. One attempt at reconciling the two is to be found in the social-democratic system that the rest of the “First World” has experienced with varying degrees of success since World War Two. Within that framework, private enterprise is still the dominant organization of production, merchants still own their own shops, and writers still get to copywright their work and to be compensated for its distribution. On the other hand, big incomes are taxed heavily; there is free public education through college; there is some state support for emerging artists; the government oversees a non-profit health insurance system; industry is regulated to conform to international envrionmental and labor agreements; and collective bargaining for pay and working conditions is widespread throughout the economy.
Back here at home, where Republican leadership has long led us in retreat from such notions, old-media artists on both coasts are on strike to establish their share of the revenue rolling in from online advertising. Content orginators deserve our support in demanding a share of the profits when their works are treated as commodities online. So let’s ALSO expand the reach of not-for-profit endeavors like Wikimedia, and continue to insist that “another world is possbible.”
December 13th, 2007 at 8:03 am
I think free culture is a lousy idea. People deserve to have FULL writes to things they create.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Of course people deserve to have all the rights they want to their own creations. It’s just that some people don’t want to exercise all, if indeed any, of those rights. The free culture movement offers, but doesn’t force, a way of submitting your work to a whole new kind of audience, letting it evolve and improve and spread. If you don’t want that to happen, simply retain the copyright. No-one’s going to stop you.
December 13th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
This article asserts a belief that one is in the wrong for not adopting free culture. Free culture works for people who are paid for jobs related to creation of non-artistic works, but for writers, artists, musicians, reporters and the like, our livelihood is based on our creation, and it is unfair for a scientist or engineer to point a finger and say a writer or artist is bad for not giving everything up for free when this is our life’s work and our income.
December 13th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
It’s not the content but the medium that alters the shape of culture (see Harold Innis). The proliferation of access to the web changes the experience of what it is to be human. Consider how all recorded music from all time is now equally accessible and music from the past,in a market situation, competes with contemporary music on a level playing field; Or consider how you can re-establish contact with people with whom you spent formative years using facebook- we need never lose track of anyone again,ever!
But this new humanity is only available to those who have access to technology. And within the world of technology, advantage is held by those who have faster access to knowlege- the closer to real time your share prices are, the more expensive the feed; or it is held by those who have new technology that supersedes and makes irrelevent what was once useful.
On a mundane level, free access to what is known is bound to have an effect on the economy. Book publishers who have been monopolising and re-selling knowlege are at risk. The priestly class of ancient Egypt was loathe to give up the secret technology of written language for fear that human minds would forget how to remember.
But the real issue is whether the logos will maintain this flesh and blood host. The only utopianism which can make this happen is agrarian utopianism. Otherwise we reach the limit of sustainability. Unless of course we can use our mastery of DNA manipulation to make humans physically smaller and smaller…
December 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Ron Collins said:
“As a content creator and business owner, it’s difficult for me to fully support the concept of totally free content without understanding the risks to my business.”
But what about other people who do not have a business to take care of
and hence would have no trouble in sharing the content they create freely?
December 13th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
“This article asserts a belief that one is in the wrong for not adopting free culture. Free culture works for people who are paid for jobs related to creation of non-artistic works, but for writers, artists, musicians, reporters and the like, our livelihood is based on our creation, and it is unfair for a scientist or engineer to point a finger and say a writer or artist is bad for not giving everything up for free when this is our life’s work and our income.”
However, there are people out there who may simply create art for the sake
of creating art, not for income. Even if this may not be the majority,
one has to realize that it does exist.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Brian wrote:
“Thus the need to combat terrorism. And for that matter, government. ”
Government does not need to be combatted: *bad* government needs to be.
Good government is a good thing, and it used to exist.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Dear all
wikinedia and tha free culture movement
THANK
—-
YATIN
December 15th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Mike, that is true.
However, the article doesn’t seem to say that, instead saying things should be made into free content for a better world. That is fair on some levels, but this article does not accept that people sometimes need to copyright their creations for selling them. Sure I could make something free, but I also need to eat — and by pointing a finger and saying “naughty, naughty you put a copyright up” that is not very nice. In a perfect world I could create and WikiMedia would buy my work and release it to the PD after purchasing the rights. This world does not exist.
December 16th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
It seems that some of you are confusing the free exchange of ideas with the thievery of another’s work. The free exchange of ideas refers to the ability to share thoughts and ideas without fear of censorship or reprisal. It does not mean that ownership of those ideas is transferred away from their creators. I hardly equate the protection of intellectual property with police-state activities; rather, the danger is in mob rule that would take my work for its own profit or other purposes against my will simply because I have no means to stop it.
Those who would equate protection of private intellectual property even on the Internet with totalitarianism need look no farther than China, with its notorious disregard for intellectual property rights, to see the fallacy of that analogy.
None of this argument suggests that any artist can’t offer work for free, whether with the intent of earning income through advertising or other means, or without the intent to gain monetarily at all. But the attack on copyright law itself would make that decision no longer the choice of the artist. To force that choice upon artists is outright theft of their potential livelihoods.
The assertions that no “artist makes a work of art with any other intention than another’s or their own enjoyment of it,” and that “superficial compensation has nothing to do with it” are complete poppycock. It’s absurd to romanticize the profession of artist thus. Would we ever argue that no surgeon ever saves a life with any other intention than to allow a patient to enjoy a full and healthy life? Utter rubbish. Just because I enjoy my work and find it to be a satisfying outlet for my creativity doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve to profit from it.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:42 am
[...] trade is in encyclopedia articles and Wikibooks is in textbooks, Wikimedia Commons is devoted to free content photographs, diagrams, illustrations, animations, videos and audio. Multimedia resources are fast [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 3:05 am
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Wikimedia and the Free Culture Movement, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.