Free and Open Source Software Movements as ...

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Chapter 10

Free and Open Source Software Movements as Agents of an Alternative Use of Copyright Law Pedro Pina Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Portugal

ABSTRACT Digital technology produced a move from a performative model to a player-as producer paradigm since it has potentiated user-generated transformative uses of intellectual works. In fact, sharing, sampling, remixing and creating new derivative content through digital network collaboration platforms are today pillars of the socalled “age of remix”. However, when unauthorized, such activities may constitute copyright infringement since the making available right and the right to make new derivative works are exclusive rights granted by copyright law. A restrictive exercise of exclusive rights may hinder the implementation of online platforms envisioned to facilitate access to knowledge and to potentiate the creation of new works. The present chapter analyzes the creation the importance of online communities of practice using free/open source software licenses like GNU GPL or Creative Commons Licenses as agents of an alternative and less rigid exercise of the powers granted by copyright law in favor of a freer system of creation and dissemination of creative works in the digital world.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2495-3.ch010 Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

Free and Open Source Software Movements as Agents of an Alternative Use of Copyright Law

INTRODUCTION In recent years, online creative communities have been reaching a high level of economic and cultural significance. Copyrightable, content-oriented, peer and mass collaboration initiatives have proliferated as free and open source software (FOSS) online projects. Examples of such projects are Wikipedia, WordPress, Android, Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, MySQL, Linux, Suncloud and Flickr. Projects such as these incorporate online organized communities of people sharing the different movements’ objectives of freely creating, remixing and disseminating cultural information. With the advent of digital technology, activities like sharing, sampling, mashing-up or creating new derivative content through digital network collaboration platforms became possible, forming the pillars of the so-called “age of remix” (Derecho, 2008; Rostama, 2015). If, in the analog world creating, printing, recording and distributing cultural goods was expensive, consumers of copyrighted works could now abandon a merely passive and consumptive role to effortlessly become content creators, individually or working within an online community seeking free dissemination of knowledge and culture. Digital technology thus facilitated the making of user-generated transformative uses, that is to say “the use of existing expression as an input into the creative process, resulting in the creation of new expression that, while still embodying elements of the original work, is original in its own right” (Suzor, 2006, p. 1). This new Read/ Write culture based on acts of producing and recreating previously experienced digital cultural goods (Lessig, 2008, 28) reflects the move from a performative model to a player-as-producer paradigm (Salen and Zimerman, 2004), where the creation and the diversity of cultural goods are promoted and access to knowledge and to information is democratized. However, when unauthorized, such activities may constitute copyright infringement. In fact, the rights to make new derivative works and to make them available in the internet are exclusive rights granted by copyright law to rightholders, excluding others from it without proper authorization and, normally, remuneration, whether the use is mere consumptive or creative. A restrictive exercise of exclusive rights may hinder the implementation of online platforms envisioned to facilitate access to knowledge and to potentiate the creation of new works. Projects like the ones mentioned above are based on the openness for the collaboration of members of the online community who wish to contribute with their knowledge, effort and creative expression over preexistent digital works without copyright restrictions. Because copyright may work as an instrument to lock-up creative information, lawful licensing schemes had to be created so that FOSS movements could keep their ethos of openness.

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