Topic 12 - Electronic Civil Liberties/Creative Commons/Free and Open Source Software

Lecture

This weeks lecture related to last weeks in that it discussed peer-to-peer file sharing and also free software that is available online for consumers. We talked about all the different software that we use on a day-to-day basis. Things like MSN, Mac OS, iTunes and Windows are just a few. Adam discussed two different organisations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Creative Commons. The EFF is an organisation that protects and promotes online civil liberties. Creative Commons is an organisation that allows artists to distribute their product to the public, but also allows them to assert some control over how it is done. The public are able to share remix or alter music made by an artist online for non-profit purposes and without the worry of breaching copyright laws.

Readings

We had a couple of readings this week. The first was Why Software Should Not Have Owners by Richard Stallman. This reading discusses copyright laws in relation to software programs. He talks about how certain companies will tally it as a loss each time someone downloads or copies their software for free, regardless of the fact that the person illegally downloading it probably would never actually buy it anyway. Stallman reacts negatively to copyright laws, suggesting all software should be free in order for everyone to get along. He seems to scoff at the idea of an illegal download as being detrimental to the company that made it.

The second reading this week was called FLOSS. It stands for Free Libre Open Source Software. The reading again discusses open source software and explains the particulars about it. That once an organisation decides to license a piece of software as free, then the public may download and distribute it as they please. They acknowledge that this is advantageous as it means there is more circulation of the software. The third reading, Creative Commons by Cory Doctorow. It again is very similar to the other readings, specifically focussing on Creative Commons and what was discussed in the lecture. Creative Commons is an organisation that allows you to download and distribute art without worrying about copyright penalties.

Tutorial

I used this time to focus on study for the exam, going over all the blogs for the subject that I had done over the semester.