Does Lawrence Lessig support DRM?

It seems a more appropriate name for creative commons free culture would be open culture :-/ .

Now what? Are we going to fork Free Culture? How?

Well, Free Culture is Free Culture. It is about freedom, not price, not just vague "open".

It is apparent that Creative Commons and Lawrence Lessig aren't suited to lead a real Free Culture because they are too vague and undefined to make a long-term difference and shift the attention to the deepest issues behind the need for Free Culture. The deepest issue inevitably comes down to freedom.

I think that someone should finally define what makes a Free Culture, what is the core philosophy behind it, what matters most and why does it matter.

We need to look up to the Free Software movement for guidance, because that is where the whole idea came from in the first place (it all started with Free Software, even CC was inspired by it).

We could start developing a Free Culture Definition which, if developed cooperatively and with peer review of a large number of community participants *could* become a valuable reference standard for Free Culture (the same way Free Software Definition is for Free Software)

I think we on Libervis.com, no matter how unknown and small we may still be, have managed to accumulate some pretty ourstanding material to base something like this off..

In most part I think it could be this paper: Free Software Model in other Areas of Economy, the "hidden" treasure of Libervis.com, as the first and yet most significant thing we developed cooperatively here. :-)

We already know about the Free Software Definition and on Libervis.com we already have the following:

The above could be deemed as a "Free Economy" definition, something that could largely be applied to Free Culture. The "knowledge of production" can cover so much. Maybe a better way to put it is "knowledge of creation".

When this knowlegde is free (as in freedom), essentially everything that is produced as its outcome (such as music for example) is essentially free as in freedom.

I think there's a good base to start, finally, building a Free Culture Definition and a core Free Culture Philosophy to adhere to. :-)

So wanna "fork"? ;-)

The Creative Commons history should be the opposite of free software/open source. The current CC is "open," now we need a free fork.

We should try to avoid conflict and confusion by giving our version a different name. However every name I can think of has already been taken by others, except "information freedom" but is that correct english?

The alternative is to just call it "libervis"...

Lessig wrote a clarification of his statement and Tarmle has again responded.

I agree with Tarlme. Lessigs clarification, or more of a justification is still pretty vague and shows some rather unrealistic expectations. It is practically telling us we should trust Sun for making its "openDRM" or even worse that we should trust parties that will use Sun's DRM that it wont be for purpose of locking down access to certain cultural goods without us having a chance to unlock it without paying unfair fees.

Again, I believe that the whole Digital Restrictions Management concept is fundamentally wrong. I'm not talking about the technology used for it, but the purpose for which it is used (I am saying that because some don't make that distinction) and the purpose is no good, digital restrictions when they're utterly unnecessary for cultural progress (infact they're deadly to it).

Well, from what I know there is no free culture definition anywhere yet nor a given set of core ideals necessary for culture to be free, so our version would basically be the first one. What this means is that people who will be looking for a definition of the Free Culture and the set of ideals that this movement should follow would come to our definition. That again means it is possible to change the Free Culture movement from the inside without changing the name. I'm not sure though if that would really be the case..

Maybe "Libre Culture" would be good, but that's not entirely english. :-)

Hm maybe.. or maybe it doesn't have to be exclusively "libervis". Maybe we can call our definition (and set of articles explaining the core philosophy) as just "Libervis Free Culture". That would make some distinction without distancing us too far from the existing Free Culture movement and loosing the word "free" (as in freedom) from it..

Now if people will want to shorten it to "Libervis Culture" that's fine. "Libervis" is actually a latin word for a superlative of the word "free", thus it means "most free".

We are not necessarily trying to fork the movement. Besides, actually planning such a thing would be rather presumptious. If we are to go all the way through this we are just developing what has been missing from the current movement, the core fundamentals starting from a definition to the core philosophy. After we have that and after the community starts accepting that, the Free Culture movement will know where exactly it should move. Wether Creative Commons, EFF and other organizations fit that would be seen on the way, but at least they wouldn't be the only ones to look for leadership. They would instead look towards the community itself, that would have created the core philosophy. :-)

Thanks

Any technology that uses the name DRM can only be used for bad purposes: managing (that is, restricting) the rights of others.
Don't confuse DRM with rights (eg privacy) protection trough encryption. DRM uses encryption algorithms, but that doesn't make all encryption DRM. DRM actually is a threat to privacy.

A book by Lessig with the title "Free Culture" comes to mind.

You're right, "forking" is not the right word. We have our own ideals and we just found out they do not completely match those of the perceived leader of the movement. It is important to note the word "perceived" here. There really is no leader at all. Libervis has an overlap with the free software, open source and free culture movements, and other movements too. Maybe we're still a bit small to consider us yet another movement. For a while we thought we were a subset of one (free software) then another (free culture) but in reality Libervis is not and has never been led by Stallman or Lessig or whoever. We don't fork or split off because we were never part. We're only similar and coexist. So let's just continue calling ourselves "libervis", continue defining what that means, and never mind what I said about forking.

By the way, we already knew we're not on exactly the same line as Lessig. Danijel wrote an article about that...

The whole point is there is just more than "information" is "entertainment" also information, can they really be separated out like that? I think the answer to that is no, not really.
One of the reasons that DRM has been accepted to some extent is people and their relationship with the artists as "patrons of the arts" even if this simply means watching Hollywood movies or buying music. People do it because they feel it is morally the right thing to do to support the artists by giving them money. But it is not morally right to support something that takes away the very value of the artists life from them, restrictions imposed by law on creativity, the lifeblood of the arts.

That's what I mean. I think you just put it differently. :-) Encryption technology can be used for DRM purposes (bad) and non-DRM purposes (good) which is why I make a distinction between technology as something not inherently wrong or right and the purpose it's used for (which can be inherently wrong or bad) such as digital restrictions.

Eh indeed. Many view that book as the guiding document they need. The book is actually a good for explaining the way the big industry uses technology and law to lock up culture and creativity (as the subtitle says), but I'm not so sure about the solution that it proposes, or the ideas that it presents. Those are pretty much the same ideas that created Creative Commons and just as Creative Commons, it is rather vague, lost in perpetual search for balance failing to actually define an exact authors standpoint on the whole issue.

I think Lessigs Free Culture just lacks a strong durable long-term philosophical foundation, which allows for wavering into various directions.

Well said. :-)

Libervis has a collective leadership. I myself may individually consider Richard Stallman as a leader for the Free Software movement and I admire him as such, but this cannot be applied to the whole collective. We can't say that RMS is the leader of the libervis collective.

Libervis may be about untainted perspective. We overlap with other movements and established philosophies and ideals, but never to a point of becoming "posterboys" of any of these movement, so strictly dedicated to them for the sake of association alone that we aren't able to critically examine them. No, we are "on the outside", and now I think we could use a core philosophy of our own, the fundamentals for a libervis free culture that anyone who recognizes it as important can try to adhere to.

And we can develop it collectively.

Thanks
Daniel

That is just the characteristic of the current social climate we are in. People who are still thinking inside of that box still don't have the right perspective. From their perspective, it is good to support DRM if that supports artists. Of course, they actually believe that it supports artists because being inside of that box where only major industry media message is coming through they don't know that this is not the case.

Education is the key, getting through to them and simply letting them know and think about it, so they can join us.

The problem is that many big companies who think inside the box (e.g. Microsoft) help fund the education systems - and this will just mean the people are 'educated' to think inside the box. Not untill freedom is taught at schools and universities will we be in a place where there are no people who think inside the box.