Free culture is a culture wherein artists, musicians, singers, authors, composers as well as audiences can freely borrow or copy each other’s work without thinking about copyrights or licensing. This culture encourages artists to put their works under a free license for everybody to use and enjoy. The artists who practice free culture believes that their works should not be bounded by terms and conditions imposed by the legalities of our laws. It actually opposes the culture that we are used to that is the “permission culture” where movies, music, and art cannot be used or borrowed unless with the permission of the recording company or film studio who owns it. With this, we can realize that free culture not only counters permission culture but also the monopoly of big companies who tries to control art to make bigger profits.
In free culture, we might think that since everybody can just use anybody’s art, that artists are not able to earn off of it. But in this day and age of the Internet, artists earn having their works freely available in the World Wide Web. Let’s say for example starting musicians. What they do is they put their music in websites, and earn on web traffic, number of downloads, and advertisements. Another examples are reaction videos on Youtube, they use other people’s videos and music for them to react on and earn off of it through clicks and ad placements. With free culture, there is some sort of a commensal relationship between artists and audiences that they are benefitting with each other’s work without antagonizing each other.
What is tricky about free culture is where we draw the line between free license and plagiarisms. Although free culture believes in freedom in using each other’s work, they still believe that artists should always be credited for what they create and not to be passed on as somebody else’s. So basically, you can use somebody else’s work all you want but don’t tell people that you are the one who produced it. Plagiarism, even in free culture is unethical.
Personally, I am not against free culture and in the contrary I am starting to be a part of it. One thing I like about free culture is that it promotes creativity regardless of age, sex, nationality, and experience. It’s a free for all that anybody can just express himself/herself through art. Another thing about free culture that I like is that art is not monopolized by big companies that give more artists equal chances of earning off of their works. It also gives, especially the starting artists a platform to gather following and be known to audiences. Exposure is maybe the best thing artists get in free culture. It gives them the chance to have their work be used by different artists that makes their art more recognizable to people. Lastly, in free culture, options and creativity are limitless. Art and artists are not manipulated by few individuals but is directed by the need and artistic cravings of people that makes free culture a dynamic culture.
Reference:
Fogel, K. (2011, July 22). QuestionCopyright.org. Retrieved May 09, 2017, from http://questioncopyright.org/what_is_free_culture
Images:
http://freemusicarchive.org/member/cheyenne_h/blog/State_of_the_Commons_Free_Music_Free_Culture
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