Free culture facts for kids

Free culture is a big idea and a movement that wants to make it easier for people to share art, music, and other creative works. It believes that current copyright laws are sometimes too strict. The goal is to create a system where sharing and building on each other's creations is simpler. When we say "free" in "free culture," we mean "freedom" – like being free to do something – not that it costs no money.

This movement really started with a person named Lawrence Lessig. He wrote a famous book called Free Culture. He also helped create Creative Commons, which is an organization that supports free sharing in education and art. The free culture movement is a lot like the free software movement, but it focuses on all kinds of creative works, like pictures, songs, movies, and books. Some cool examples of free cultural works include the animated movie Big Buck Bunny and all the files you can find on Wikimedia Commons. Even Wikipedia is part of the free culture idea because its articles use a special "free" license.

What are Free Cultural Works?

Works that follow the ideas of free culture are called free cultural works or just free works. These works have special rules that let anyone do certain things with them.

How You Can Use Free Works

Free cultural works allow everyone to:

• Use the work personally: You can enjoy the work without any limits. For example, you can watch a movie or listen to a song as much as you want.
• Study and understand the work: You can look closely at how the work was made. For instance, you could examine the code of a video game or see how a song was composed.
• Share the work with others: You are free to give copies of the work to your friends. You can even sell it to someone if you want to.
• Change or improve the work: You can make your own changes to the work. For example, you could add different music to a movie or translate a book into another language. After you change it, you can also do all the things listed above with your new version!

Free Licenses Explained

Artists who create something can make it "free" by adding a special permission note called a "free license." The most well-known free licenses are from Creative Commons (CC). However, it's important to know that not all Creative Commons licenses are "free" in the way the movement defines it. Some CC licenses might stop you from using the work for business or from changing it.

The Creative Commons licenses that are considered truly "free" are:

• CC0: This means the creator gives up all their rights, putting the work into the public domain. Anyone can do anything with it.
• CC-BY: This means you can use, share, and change the work, but you must give credit to the original creator.
• CC-BY-SA: This means you can use, share, and change the work, and you must give credit. Also, if you share your changed version, you must share it under the same "ShareAlike" license.

Images for kids

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  Lawrence Lessig, a key person in the free-culture movement, in 2005.

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  Student organization FreeCulture.org, started in 2003. The building blocks show how creative works can be reused and remixed.

See also

In Spanish: Movimiento por la cultura libre para niños