The Popular Choice, By More Than 2

If The Only Way A Library Can Offer An Internet Exhibit About The New Deal Is To Hire A Lawyer To Clear The Rights To Every Image And Sound, Then The Copyright System Is Burdening Creativity In A Way That Has Never Been Seen Before Because There Are No Formalities.

A Free Culture Supports And Protects Creators And Innovators. It Does This Directly By Granting Intellectual Property Rights. But It Does So Indirectly By Limiting The Reach Of Those Rights, To Guarantee That Follow-on Creators And Innovators Remain As Free As Possible From The Control Of The Past. A Free Culture Is Not A Culture Without Property, Just As A Free Market Is Not A Market In Which Everything Is Free. The Opposite Of A Free Culture Is A "permission Culture" -- A Culture In Which Creators Get To Create Only With The Permission Of The Powerful, Or Of Creators From The Past.

[conservatives] Go To Church, They Do Lots Of Things For Free For Each Other. They Hold Potluck Dinners. ... They Serve Food To Poor People. They Share, They Give, They Give Away For Free. It's The Very Same People Leading Wall Street Firms Who, On Sundays, Show Up And Share.

The More Important Point, However, Is Not About What The Money Does. It's About What Has To Be Done To Get The Money. The Effect Of The Money Might Be (democratically) Benign. But What Is Done To Secure That Money Is Not Necessarily Benign. To Miss This Point Is To Betray The Robin Hood Fallacy: The Fact That The Loot Was Distributed Justly Doesn't Excuse The Means Taken To Secure It.

Monopoly Controls Have Been The Exception In Free Societies; They Have Been The Rule In Closed Societies.