Monday, November 30, 2009

Lecture 4 - Free Culture, Free Society

This lecture was on Free Culture and Free Society. Basically it was about Creative Commons. Creative Commons are the internet equilivant of copyright laws. It was founded in December 2002 and is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting reasonable copyright. Creative Commons enable ’some rights reserved’ rather than ‘all rights reserved’.

The lecture also covered topics like how software on the computer works. There are two types of software, Free and Proprietary. Free software works on four principles: Freedom O which is the freedom to run the program, for any purpose. Freedom 1, the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs. Freedom 2, the freedomt o re-distribute copies so you can help your neighbour and Freedom 3, the freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public so that thw whole community benefits.

Proprietary software is where a source code remains confidential. Software development mainly in-house are made by paid teams and the development goals are set by software companies. The business then sell the finished software packages.

There are 3 key words in Free Culture and Free Society:
Community – Poeple who want to share and do something good so the whole community benefits. Helping your neighbour is not a crime.
Collaboration – Instead of going against copyright and breaking the law, people can work together to create good things.
Choice – You paid for your computer with your hard-earned money, its a tool for communicating and creating. Don’t let companies like Microsoft and Apple tell you how to use your computer.

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