“Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing” – Cody Doctorow (from his preface to Little Brother – available as a free e-book here)
Copyleft symbol
Creative Commons was set up to encourage authors to surrender part (but not all) their rights under copyright law so that their work enters the public domain.
A prime mover behind this so-called copyleft movement was the late Aaron Swartz.
I’m ashamed to say that I have only come to realise what an important figure he was since his tragic suicide at the age of 26.
He stood up to enemies of the freedom to connect and one of those who ensured that ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) failed to get on the statute books. He explains this campaign against state censorship in a keynote address at a Washington DC conference.
SOPA and the legal campaigns against Swartz illustrate that there are many powerful groups and individuals who would dearly love to claw back control of the internet from the ordinary people.
The introduction to Cody Doctorow’s novel which I quoted from above contains a passionate argument in favour of what essentially amounts to giving away creative works for free.
Doctorow argues that for the vast majority of writers and musicians, meaning those who aren’t the next Dan Brown or the new Coldplay, the big problem isn’t privacy but obscurity. He writes: “if the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former”. Continue reading
