dzahsh: seeing how victor seems to like all this open source stuff, and there were some links posted as a comment to victors message, i was reminded that i know some sites that sort of define and promote all these wonderful ideas, "another world is possible", they say:
sourceforge.net
the official archive of open source software projects of every type
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird - internet browser and email program, completely open source, user built, free, high quality, better than anything microsoft has out [esp. outlook, uhhg]
www.eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation
dealing with rights of openness and freedom generally throughout the digital world
creativecommons.org
works with archive.org to provide a wide variety of "share and
share alike" copyleft licenses for music, film, art, etc. similar to
the FSF's GPL[general public license] for open source software
www.freeculture.org
[free as in speech not free as in beer] deals with freedom within
art and culture as a whole, rooted in strong arguments "against
interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and
discourse online", based on a book by Lawerence Lessig
[www.lessig.org] who chairs both creativecommons.org and eff.org
also www.libresociety.org, www.firstmonday.org
www.wikipedia.org
www.wikinews.org
a comprehensive open source encyclopedia and news source, written by you and me, by thousands of volunteers, anyone can enter a definition for any topic, write a news story, which then will be reviewed for accuracy and then posted, wikimedia is all about making open journalism work, people keep saying "oh how can anything be trusted to be unbiased and accurate when anyone can write the entries," but wiki is dedicated to a completely unbiased library of information, they have forums on which people discuss and argue topics that they think might have been defined biasly [for example, for the wiki article on anti-globalization, they claim that "the neutrality of this article is disputed" and links you to the discussion page where you can read about exactly what people claim is biased]
the ideas of free culture are based on the thought that releasing intellectual property [creations of the mind, ideas, i.e. inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, design, etc.] from copyrights and trademarks will allow these ideas to freely move throughout our culture, allowing them to be freely used and reused by others to create newer and better ideas. copyrights and trademarks only restrict ideas from being taken in and improved upon to a select few who have the money to pay for the right to use it.
this is especially an issue today since our culture is becoming more and more solely defined by the images, art, music, film, ideas of the corporate entertainment industry. it has come to the point where some argue that our mainstream american culture has become entirely privately owned by a select number of multinationals. we as a society do not own our own culture, we have become so completely separated from our culture that we now have to pay to have complete access it. the most progressive of today's mainstream art [music, film, design] is no longer created by the artist, but by the logo-ed corporation [universal, pixar, sony, mtv, disney] and exists solely to make profit, even if they base their works on humanist, environmentalist, etc. ideas, it still in the end exists to satisfy the demands of the shareholder
the open source movement in software was a sort of revolution because it really proved that taking an element of our culture and removing all copyrights and barriers actually worked to allow thousands of people to come together to volunteer for a cause[!] and collectively create something as complex as an computer operating system [linux] that matched the quality of software once thought was only able to come out of highly internal, closed doors companies [windows]. and even more, it showed that people can still make a living off of it by providing services, packaging, assistance, etc. for those who what to use the product [red hat, SuSE]. and because linux is completely and legally free for anyone to download off the internet, SuSE is able to sell their packaged version of linux for like $30 while the latest upgrade to windows xp retails at like $300. but, linux really hasnt gotten popular as a personal OS outside of circles of computer nerds, but it is highly highly popular when running the servers and computer networks of large companies because of how inexpensive it is
so its kind of unclear able how exactly this process can be applied to art, architecture, culture in general, no one is advocating stuff like illegal P2P music and movie sharing, they more want to see music and movies made that are created to be shared and traded freely in the first place, which is why you have archive.org and creativecommons.org, people seem to be confused as to why anyone would willing create something that they wouldnt be directly making money off of, but it worked for linux because there was a cause, this sort of movement to create something that belonged to everyone, where that separated relationship between the producer and the consumer was nonexistent, we are now both, we create our own, its very grassroots and very real, very punk rock, working hard for the cause and for what you believe in, its what everyone wants, right? thats whats so amazing about the internet, we are now more able than ever to give back to our culture, create our own cultures and sub-cultures of idea trading and opinion making, its blogging/open-journalism sites like this one that prove that it is actually possible for people to create and and write and discuss without wanting to get paid to do it.
