[Foundation-l] Anarchopedia changed its license

[Samuel Klein]

Milos,

This is a great post.

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> As it may be of interest here, I am sending my blog
> post<http://blog.millosh.org/2009/04/anarchopedia-changed-its-license.html>to
> the list.

> And a couple of my personal notes:
>
>   - Anarchists are not a part of the free culture movement. Free culture is
>   defined by licenses and licenses are the part of state system.

Free culture is NOT defined by licenses.  If there is any consensus on
this, a good chunk of free culture fanatics need to find a better name
for their movement and goals.  The replacement of copyright with more
sensible social norms for sharing is an important part of sharing
culture.

>   - I even think that "free culture" term is an oxymoronic one. There is no
>   free culture. Every culture defines its own rules, which is lowering
>   freedom. Of course, I am not against culture, but I, simply, think that
>   "free culture" is a similar phrase to "free prison". There are no such
>   things.

I think it's oxymoronic for the opposite reason - there is no rational
way to impose 'rules' on culture, which is by definition a set of
things freely and implicitly shared... it is like "free thinking", as
though anything but a nightmare could prevent thoughts from being
free.


>   - Yes, it is better to have non-proprietary knowledge than proprietary
>   knowledge. As well as capitalism is better than feudalism or slavery.
>   However, licensed knowledge and capitalism are just far away of anarchist
>   political positions.

you can come up with toy universes and cultures in which any obscure
or counterproductive system looks 'locally better'.  I think this is a
much more practical discussion than 'political positions of a social
group'.  What is the best way to ensure that almost all factual
knowledge is available at almost no cost in almost all circumstances
to almost everyone in the world?  This is a practical question that
enough info and reflection would allow us to answer, in any given
year.

>   - And, inside of current social organization I think that the best option
>   for one anarchist project is to choose the most pragmatic one.

Sounds reasonable to me.

SJ