Re: [libreplanet-discuss] What do you think about the FSF using/endorsing nonfree cultural works?

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/12/2016 07:23 AM, Yoni Rabkin wrote:

> As Aaron points out, I think that the respective party's positions on
> the matter are already well established and don't need to be repeated.
> 

Indeed, and like before 100% of the comments rejecting the importance of
free culture are ignoring all the points in the discussion.

This topic always goes on like this:

A: Free culture matters too, and CC licenses have adequate protections
about endorsements or removal etc. etc. and here's other points about
why the distinction between software and other works is fuzzy or doesn't
hold up.

B: The FSF doesn't reject free culture, they just think it's also okay
to have non-free culture. "Works of Opinion" are different, see this GNU
article. Besides, what if people undermine our message?

A: But I already know all of that, and provided examples of the value of
free culture, and nobody has counter-examples of why free culture is
bad. And people can undermine us or violate licenses regardless of what
terms we use. ND restrictions mostly hurt us and benefits that we want
and restrict freedoms people should have.

B: The FSF already accepts that documentation and other such reference
works need to be free, but art and political writings are different.

…

In general this whole conversation seems to always happen between people
advocating for free culture and people who just repeat existing GNU/FSF
doctrine as though the free-culture-advocates are just ignorant. Never
have I seen any actual response to the points about CC licenses have
adequate clauses to protect against abuse as far as licenses can go.
Never have I seen any response to my point that non-free
source-available software for non-essential things (say a silly game
software) presents far less ethical problems than important cultural
works being non-free.

I will admit that witnessing this pattern over and over is frustrating.
The free-culture skeptics get their concerns answered (sometimes the
answer admits that free-culture *does* mean giving up *some* power and
control, but that it's worth it and justified to do so). And then the
free-culture skeptics just ignore this and the discussion either ends or
just continues with people talking past each other.

The most fair response I've ever gotten was just from RMS himself, which
was *something* like this (my imperfect memory):

A: Why not free culture?
RMS: These are works of opinion, I don't want to be misrepresented
A: But CC BY-SA has all these clauses to protect against that, and you
can be misrepresented anyway either in ways that don't affect the
license or by people violating the license
RMS: Maybe I'll look over the CC licenses again, but I'm not convinced
it's adequate.

I appreciate that RMS speaks out about the importance of allowing things
like music remixing.