The free culture
movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and
modify creative works, using the Internet as well as other media. The movement
objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely rejects the
concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the
movement also argue hinder creativity. They call this system "permission
culture".
In 1998, the United
States Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act which
President Clinton signed into law. The legislation extended copyright
protections for twenty additional years, resulting in a total guaranteed
copyright term of seventy years after a creator’s death. The bill was heavily
lobbied by corporations like Disney, and dubbed as the Mickey Mouse Protection
Act. Lawrence Lessig claims copyright is an obstacle to cultural production, knowledge
sharing and technological innovation, and that private interests – as opposed
to public good – determine law. He travelled the country in 1998, giving as
many as a hundred speeches a year at college campuses, and sparked the
movement. It led to the foundation of the first chapter of the Students for
Free Culture at Swarthmore College.
In 1999, Lessig
challenged the Bono Act, taking the case to the US Supreme Court. Despite his
firm belief in victory, citing the Constitution’s plain language about “limited”
copyright terms, Lessig only gained two dissenting votes: from Justices Stevens
and Breyer.
In 2001, Lessig
initiated Creative Commons, an alternative “some rights reserved” licensing
system to the default “all rights reserved” copyright system.
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