Open, Closed, Free or Fare?
Creative Commons is an approach that attempts to ensure that information in its various forms, can be shared by others for free. That is my take on it at least. And over time we’ve seen some major organisations shape the idea of ‘free’ to ‘free with conditions’ and ‘free for a fee’. The last one staggers me but hey, that’s their approach not mine. Increasingly we are seeing examples of information that starts off as being ‘free’ then merged into a commercial ‘not free’ world and subsequently locking out the free content. I’m thinking of a
solution to that problem that works along the following lines:
What is required is a ‘Free Infectious’ license. I’m pretty certain that is not a great term for it and the concept is the same. People would mark their works using a Creative Commons style license as ‘free’ with the ‘infectious’ part of the deal meaning that ANY information that the ‘free’ information is attached to, would also then become ‘free’. In other words, in using someone’s work marked with a ‘free infectious’ license, people would agree that their own content would also then become free.
The free infection would replicate and prevent the lockdown and barrier installations that sees works of all kinds currently free to the public, from being locked away behind pay per view, pay per use firewalls and the like. Just an idea
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