How important is copyright respect for a healthy FLOSS ecosystem?

[jspaleta]

I have a very hard time understanding how multiple outspoken members of a FLOSS community can find it socially acceptable to lift up creative multimedia works made in their community, meant to show off what is great about their community, but are themselves flagrant infringements of the copyrights of others who are doing their work outside of the

Comments

Re: Is the argument correct or not?

[jspaleta]

It's a reaction to a specific situation... but this post is meant as a more talking point about the behavior more generally. I very much doubt the people who are involved in the incident I am reacting to are going to read this. They already know how I feel about their actions. The point of this post isn't to shame them publicly. The point is to broach the topic about the behavior and why I'm reacting as strongly as I am.

I think there is now a deep and widespread cultural disrepect for media copyright(especially music) that didn't exist in the functional code world that has incubated FLOSS philosophy and best practises with respect to copyright licensing hygiene. As we are moving out and expanding the sphere of influence of that philosophy we are going to run into that cultural difference. My concern is that the newer breed of FLOSS leadership being recruited from the mainstream media culture are diluting the core beliefs about the importance of respecting copyright. I believe this is a big problem.

And this isn't a concern about maintaining a moral high ground.. its a concern about moral compass. If its okay to rationalize the infringing music copyright today for convenience arguments inside the FLOSS community..we risk seeing a future where its seen to be okay to rationale the infringing of the (L)GPL licensing of the linux kernel.

We are also going to run into this cultural divide about copyright respect more and more I think...especially those among us who are pioneering outreach into mainstream culture via thinks like open education initiatives and who are interacting more directly with people and students who would self-classify themselves as technology and media consumers and not technology and media creators.

In a consumer culture copyright respect isn't a valuable thing at all. In a digital maker/creator culture its a defining set of rules for interaction between peers. If all we do is teach consumers how to use a set of open tools without also teaching copyright respect, we aren't going to succeed at building a wider cultural commons.

Re: Is the argument correct or not?

[ext_37366]

I think I'd have a lot of trouble putting my name to a statement that says I "respect copyright" -- the free software movement is an action *against* the unethical situations that are enabled by copyright law, isn't it? The fact that we use copyright as a tool to help create a world that looks remarkably similar to a world _without_ copyright doesn't mean that we're all gigantic fans of copyright and must never speak out against it.

That's my answer, anyway; maybe I'm much farther out on the FSF/Larry Lessig side of the copyright argument than most.