Free culture facts for kids

Free culture is a concept and a movement that tries to help people share art very freely. It says copyright laws are too strict and tries to create a less limiting system. The word "free" In "free culture" means "freedom", not price.

The beginning of the movement is connected to Lawrence Lessig who has written a book named Free Culture and started Creative Commons, an organization that supports things like free culture and education. The movement is similar to free software movement but focuses on all art works, e.g. images or songs. Some free cultural works are for example the movie Big Buck Bunny or files at Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia is also part of free culture because it uses a free license for its articles.

The rules

Works, for example movies, that respect free culture are called free cultural works or simply free works. These works have to allow anyone to:

1. Use the work personally without limits, for example watch the movie.
2. Use the work in any other way, for example examine it and see how it was made.
3. Give the work to others, for example your friends, or even sell it to someone.
4. Change the work in any way, for example add different music to the movie. You can also do everything above with the changed version.

The artist who creates something can make it free by adding a free license to it. Most famous free licenses are Creative Commons (CC) licenses. However, not all Creative Commons licenses are free (some for example prohibit commercial use or changing the work). The free CC licenses are CC0, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.

Images for kids

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  Lawrence Lessig, an influential activist of the free-culture movement, in 2005.