Linux Journal: Why Open Content Matters

“Don’t be misled by the e-commerce hiccup; we’re on a
digitization juggernaut. Just a few years ago, leather-bound
DayTimers dominated business meetings, but no longer; today, you’ll
find a preponderance of Palm Pilots. As for that novel or newspaper
you’re reading, doubt it not: digitization is coming. Of course,
you needn’t worry about print media disappearing overnight; if
anything, the Internet is fueling a renaissance of newspaper
reading. Beneath the surface, though, print media have changed. The
underlying technology is already digital, from the point of
creation to the means of national and international distribution.
As publishers are trying to capitalize on their digitized product,
they’re pushing the US Congress to enact legislation granting them
what amounts to real property rights in perpetuity over printed
material–rights in which even the authors do not share. Coupled
with these disturbing legal developments, the digitization of print
media archives presages the rise of a world in which access to
basic facts and scientific knowledge is parceled out by a
state-protected pay-per-view industry–and as you’ll learn in this
article, that’s bad news for democracy. If for-profit copyright
holders get their way, democratic notions concerning public access
to factual information may seem just as quaint as a DayTimer seems
to the Palm-toting digerati.”

“In this article, I’ll argue that the open content movement–a
movement to release written documents with a license similar to the
GNU General Public License (GPL)–is beginning to stir for
precisely the same reasons that launched the Free Software movement
in the 1980s: the realization that a for-profit industry was about
to lock up indispensable public knowledge and, in so doing, pose a
grave threat to the advancement of knowledge and human welfare.
This time, the stakes are, if anything, even greater. If the social
goals of the Free Software movement mean anything to you,
please–read on. (Fair warning: this is a bit long, but I hope
you’ll conclude it’s worth the effort.)”

“In what follows, I’ll argue the healthy democracy depends
not only on the ability of citizens to access facts and ideas
freely, but also to produce derivative works that substantially
incorporate and rework the means of expression found in copyrighted
works. Be forewarned: by contemporary standards, my position
is a decidedly fringe perspective, notwithstanding the fact that,
in my view, it aptly characterizes the view that prevailed during
the American republic’s first century (a point to which this essay
returns).”

Complete
Story