Free content

Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of functional
work, work of art, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work,
meaning "works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified,
by anyone, for any purpose."[1] Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and
also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the definition of free cultural
work.

Logo of the Definition of Free

Cultural Works project

The logo on the screen in the subject's left

hand is a Creative Commons license, while
the paper in his right hand explains, in Khmer,
that the image is open content
In most countries, the Berne Convention grants copyright holders monopolistic control over
their creations by default, therefore, copyrighted content must be explicitly declared free. This
is usually accomplished by referencing or including licensing statements from within the
work.

Definition
A free cultural work is, according to the definition of Free Cultural Works, one that has no
significant legal restriction on people's freedom to:

use the content and benefit from using

it,
study the content and apply what is
learned,
make and distribute copies of the
content,
change and improve the content and
distribute these derivative works.[1][2]
Although there are a great many different definitions in regular everyday use, free content is
legally very similar to open content. An analogy is a use of the rival terms free software and
open-source, which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.[3] The term Open
Source, by contrast, sought to encompass them all in one movement.[4][5] For instance, the
Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Definition describes "open" as synonymous with the
definition of free in the "Definition of Free Cultural Works" (as also in the Open Source
Definition and Free Software Definition).[6] For such free/open content both movements
recommend the same three Creative Commons licenses, the CC BY, CC BY-SA, and
CC0.[7][8][9][10]

Legal matters

Copyright

Copyright
symbol

Copyright is a legal concept, which gives the author or creator of a work legal control over the
duplication and public performance of their work. In many jurisdictions, this is limited by a
time period after which the works then enter the public domain. Copyright laws are a balance
between the rights of creators of intellectual and artistic works and the rights of others to
build upon those works. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be
copied, modified, or publicly performed with the consent of the author, unless the use is a fair
use. Traditional copyright control limits the use of the work of the author to those who either
pay royalties to the author for usage of the author's content or limit their use to fair use.
Secondly, it limits the use of content whose author cannot be found.[11] Finally, it creates a
perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works, such as mashups and
collaborative content.[12]
Public domain

Public domain
logo

The public domain is a range of creative works whose copyright has expired or was never
established, as well as ideas and facts[note 1] which are ineligible for copyright. A public
domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished to the public or no longer can
claim control over, the distribution and usage of the work. As such, any person may
manipulate, distribute, or otherwise use the work, without legal ramifications. A work in the
public domain or released under a permissive license may be referred to as "copycenter".[13]

Copyleft

Copyleft symbol

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to
remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work.[14] The aim of
copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to
reuse and, in many licensing schemes, modify content that is created by an author. Unlike
works in the public domain, the author still maintains copyright over the material, however,
the author has granted a non-exclusive license to any person to distribute, and often modify,
the work. Copyleft licenses require that any derivative works be distributed under the same
terms and that the original copyright notices be maintained. A symbol commonly associated
with copyleft is a reversal of the copyright symbol, facing the other way; the opening of the C
points left rather than right. Unlike the copyright symbol, the copyleft symbol does not have a
codified meaning.[15]

Usage
Projects that provide free content exist in several areas of interest, such as software,
academic literature, general literature, music, images, video, and engineering. Technology has
reduced the cost of publication and reduced the entry barrier sufficiently to allow for the
production of widely disseminated materials by individuals or small groups. Projects to
provide free literature and multimedia content have become increasingly prominent owing to
the ease of dissemination of materials that are associated with the development of computer
technology. Such dissemination may have been too costly prior to these technological
developments.

Media

Creative
Commons logo

In media, which includes textual, audio, and visual content, free licensing schemes such as
some of the licenses made by Creative Commons have allowed for the dissemination of
works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all Creative Commons licenses are entirely
free; their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of
the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Since February 2008, Creative
Commons licenses which are entirely free carry a badge indicating that they are "approved for
free cultural works".[16] Repositories exist which exclusively feature free material and provide
content such as photographs, clip art, music,[17] and literature.[18] While extensive reuse of
free content from one website in another website is legal, it is usually not sensible because of
the duplicate content problem. Wikipedia is amongst the most well-known databases of user-
uploaded free content on the web. While the vast majority of content on Wikipedia is free
content, some copyrighted material is hosted under fair-use criteria.

Software

OSI logo

Free and open-source software, which is often referred to as open source software and free
software, is a maturing technology with companies using them to provide services and
technology to both end-users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination increases
modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying
collaboration. Some claim that open source development models offer similar peer-
recognition and collaborative benefit incentive as in more classical fields such as scientific
research, with the social structures that result leading to decreased production costs.[19]

Free Software
Foundation logo

Given sufficient interest in a software component, by using peer-to-peer distribution methods,

distribution costs may be reduced, easing the burden of infrastructure maintenance on
developers. As distribution is simultaneously provided by consumers, these software
distribution models are scalable; that is, the method is feasible regardless of the number of
consumers. In some cases, free software vendors may use peer-to-peer technology as a
method of dissemination.[20] Project hosting and code distribution is not a problem for most
free projects as a number of providers offer these services free of charge.
Engineering and technology

Logo of the Open

Source Hardware
Association

Free content principles have been translated into fields such as engineering, where designs
and engineering knowledge can be readily shared and duplicated, in order to reduce
overheads associated with project development. Open design principles can be applied in
engineering and technological applications, with projects in mobile telephony, small-scale
manufacture,[21] the automotive industry,[22][23] and even agricultural areas. Technologies
such as distributed manufacturing can allow computer-aided manufacturing and computer-
aided design techniques to be able to develop small-scale production of components for the
development of new, or repair of existing, devices. Rapid fabrication technologies underpin
these developments, which allow end-users of technology to be able to construct devices
from pre-existing blueprints, using software and manufacturing hardware to convert
information into physical objects.

Academia
In academic work, the majority of works are not free, although the percentage of works that
are open access is growing. Open access refers to online research outputs that are free of all
restrictions to access and free of many restrictions on use (e.g. certain copyright and license
restrictions).[24] Authors may see open access publishing as a way of expanding the audience
that is able to access their work to allow for greater impact, or support it for ideological
reasons.[25][26] Open access publishers such as PLOS and BioMed Central provide capacity
for review and publishing of free works; such publications are currently more common in
science than humanities. Various funding institutions and governing research bodies have
mandated that academics must produce their works to be open-access, in order to qualify for
funding, such as the US National Institutes of Health, Research Councils UK (effective 2016)
and the European Union (effective 2020).[27][28][29]

Open access
symbol,
originally
designed by
PLOS

At an institutional level, some universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, have adopted open access publishing by default by introducing their own
mandates.[30] Some mandates may permit delayed publication and may charge researchers
for open access publishing.[31][32] For teaching purposes, some universities, including MIT,
provide freely available course content, such as lecture notes, video resources and tutorials.
This content is distributed via Internet to the general public. Publication of such resources
may be either by a formal institution-wide program,[33] or informally, by individual academics
or departments.

Open content publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with
information retrieval in research, as universities typically pay to subscribe for access to
content that is published through traditional means.[10][34] Subscriptions for non-free content
journals may be expensive for universities to purchase, though the articles are written and
peer-reviewed by academics themselves at no cost to the publisher. This has led to disputes
between publishers and some universities over subscription costs, such as the one which
occurred between the University of California and the Nature Publishing Group.[35][36]
Legislation
Any country has its own law and legal system, sustained by its legislation, a set of law-
documents—documents containing statutory obligation rules, usually law and created by
legislatures. In a democratic country, each law-document is published as open media
content, is in principle free content; but in general, there are no explicit licenses attributed for
each law-document, so the license must be interpreted, an implied license. Only a few
countries have explicit licenses in their law-documents, as the UK's Open Government
Licence (a CC BY compatible license). In the other countries, the implied license comes from
its proper rules (general laws and rules about copyright in government works). The automatic
protection provided by the Berne Convention does not apply to law-documents: Article 2.4
excludes the official texts from the automatic protection. It is also possible to "inherit" the
license from context. The set of country's law-documents is made available through national
repositories. Examples of law-document open repositories: LexML Brazil, Legislation.gov.uk,
N-Lex. In general, a law-document is offered in more than one (open) official version, but the
main one is that published by a government gazette. So, law-documents can eventually
inherit license expressed by the repository or by the gazette that contains it.

Open content
Open content describes any work that others can copy or modify freely by attributing to the
original creator, but without needing to ask for permission. This has been applied to a range
of formats, including textbooks, academic journals, films and music. The term was an
expansion of the related concept of open-source software.[37] Such content is said to be
under an open license.

Open content definition

The website of the Open Content Project once defined open content as 'freely available for
modification, use and redistribution under a license similar to those used by the open-source
/ free software community'.[37] However, such a definition would exclude the Open Content
License because that license forbids charging for content; a right required by free and open-
source software licenses.

The term since shifted in meaning. Open content is "licensed in a manner that provides users
with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities."[38]

The 5Rs are put forward on the Open Content Project website as a framework for assessing
the extent to which content is open:

1. Retain – the right to

make, own, and
control copies of the
content (e.g.,
download, duplicate,
store, and manage)
2. Reuse – the right to
use the content in a
wide range of ways
(e.g., in a class, in a
 study group, on a
website, in a video)
3. Revise – the right to
adapt, adjust, modify,
or alter the content
itself (e.g., translate
the content into
another language)
4. Remix – the right to
combine the original
or revised content
with other open
content to create
something new (e.g.,
incorporate the
 content into a
mashup)
5. Redistribute – the
right to share copies
of the original
content, your
revisions, or your
remixes with others
(e.g., give a copy of
the content to a
friend)[38]

This broader definition distinguishes open content from open-source software, since the
latter must be available for commercial use by the public. However, it is similar to several
definitions for open educational resources, which include resources under noncommercial
and verbatim licenses.[39][40]
History

Origins
The concept of applying free software licenses to content was introduced by Michael Stutz,
who in 1997 wrote the paper "Applying Copyleft to Non-Software Information" for the GNU
Project.[41] The term "open content" was coined by David A. Wiley in 1998 and evangelized via
the Open Content Project, describing works licensed under the Open Content License (a non-
free share-alike license, see 'Free content' below) and other works licensed under similar
terms.[37]

Open Content Project logo, 1998

It has since come to describe a broader class of content without conventional copyright
restrictions. The openness of content can be assessed under the '5Rs Framework' based on
the extent to which it can be reused, revised, remixed and redistributed by members of the
public without violating copyright law.[38] Unlike free content and content under open-source
licenses, there is no clear threshold that a work must reach to qualify as 'open content'.

Although open content has been described as a counterbalance to copyright, open content
licenses rely on a copyright holder's power to license their work, as copyleft which also
utilizes copyright for such a purpose.[42]

In 2003, David Wiley announced that the Open Content Project had been succeeded by
Creative Commons and their licenses; Wiley joined as "Director of Educational
Licenses".[43][44]

In 2005, the Open Icecat project was launched, in which product information for e-commerce
applications was created and published under the Open Content License. It was embraced by
the tech sector, which was already quite open source minded.

In 2006, a Creative Commons' successor project, the Definition of Free Cultural Works, was
introduced for free content.[45] It was put forth by Erik Möller, Richard Stallman, Lawrence
Lessig, Benjamin Mako Hill, Angela Beesley, and others.[46] The Definition of Free Cultural
Works is used by the Wikimedia Foundation.[47] In 2009, the Attribution and Attribution-
ShareAlike Creative Commons licenses were marked as "Approved for Free Cultural
Works".[48]

Open Knowledge Foundation

Another successor project is the Open Knowledge Foundation, founded by Rufus Pollock in
Cambridge, in 2004[49] as a global non-profit network to promote and share open content and
data.[50]

In 2007 the OKF gave an Open Knowledge Definition for "content such as music, films, books;
data be it scientific, historical, geographic or otherwise; government and other administrative
information".[51] In October 2014 with version 2.0 Open Works and Open Licenses were
defined and "open" is described as synonymous to the definitions of open/free in the Open
Source Definition, the Free Software Definition, and the Definition of Free Cultural Works.[52]

A distinct difference is the focus given to the public domain, open access, and readable open
formats. OKF recommends six conformant licenses: three of OKN's (Open Data Commons
Public Domain Dedication and Licence, Open Data Commons Attribution License, Open Data
Commons Open Database License) and the CC BY, CC BY-SA, and CC0 Creative Commons
licenses.[53][54][55]

Open access
"Open access" refers to toll-free or gratis access to content, mainly published in peer-
reviewed scholarly journals. Some open access works are also licensed for reuse and
redistribution (libre open access), which would qualify them as open content.

The later Open Definition by the Open Knowledge Foundation defines open knowledge with
open content and open data as sub-elements and draws heavily on the Open Source
Definition; it preserves the limited sense of open content as free content,[56] unifying both.

Open content and education

Unesco's Open
Educational
Resources logo

Open content has been used to develop alternative routes towards higher education.
Traditional universities are expensive, and their tuition rates are increasing.[57][58] Open
content is a free way of obtaining higher education that is "focused on collective knowledge
and the sharing and reuse of learning and scholarly content."[59] There are multiple projects
and organizations that promote learning through open content, including OpenCourseWare
and Khan Academy. Some universities, like MIT, Yale, and Tufts are making their courses
freely available on the internet.[60]

Textbooks
Traditional textbooks, aside from being expensive, can be inconvenient and out of date,
because of publishers' tendency to print new editions.[61] Open textbooks help to eliminate
this problem, because they are online and thus easily updatable. There are multiple
organizations promoting the creation of openly licensed textbooks such as the University of
Minnesota's Open Textbook Library, Connexions, OpenStax College, the Saylor Academy,
Open Textbook Challenge, and Wikibooks.
Licenses
According to the current definition of open content on the OpenContent website, any general,
royalty-free copyright license would qualify as an open license because it 'provides users with
the right to make more kinds of uses than those normally permitted under the law. These
permissions are granted to users free of charge.'[38]

However, the narrower definition used in the Open Definition effectively limits open content to
libre content. Any free content license, defined by the Definition of Free Cultural Works, would
qualify as an open content license. According to this narrower criteria, the following still-
maintained licenses qualify:

Creative Commons licenses (only

Creative Commons Attribution,
Attribution-Share Alike and Zero)
Open Publication License (the original
license of the Open Content Project,
the Open Content License, did not
permit for-profit copying of the
licensed work and therefore does not
qualify)
Against DRM license
 GNU Free Documentation License
(without invariant sections)
Open Game License (designed for role-
playing games by Wizards of the
Coast)
Free Art License

See also

Free and
open-
source
software
portal

Digital rights
Open source
Free education
Free software movement
 Freedom of information
Information wants to be free
Open publishing
Open-source hardware
Project Gutenberg [Knowledge for free
– The Emergence of Open Educational
Resources]. 2007, ISBN 92-64-03174-X.

Explanatory notes

1. The copyright status of uncreative

aggregates of basic data may differ by
region—for the US see Feist Publications
v. Rural Telephone Service; for Australia,
see Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems.

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Further reading

D. Atkins; J. S. Brown; A. L. Hammond

(February 2007). A Review of the Open
Educational Resources (OER)
Movement: Achievements, Challenges,
and New Opportunities (http://cohesio
n.rice.edu/Conferences/Hewlett/empli
brary/A%20Review%20of%20the%20O
pen%20Educational%20Resources%20
(OER)%20Movement_BlogLink.pdf)
(PDF). Report to The William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation.
Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD):
Giving Know (http://oberon.sourceoecd.
org/vl=1280635/cl=16/nw=1/rpsv/ij/oe
cdthemes/99980029/v2007n3/s1/p1l)
(Archived (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20170707125154/http://oberon.sour
ceoecd.org/vl=1280635/cl=16/nw=1/r
psv/ij/oecdthemes/99980029/v2007n
 3/s1/p1l) 7 July 2017 at the Wayback
Machine)

External links

Media related to Open content at

Wikimedia Commons

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