[Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain

[Alec Conroy]

>> Such works belong to our global knowledge.
> You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture.

Clearly, you can copyright knowledge, for a time.  True, you can't
copyright facts or scientific laws (yet)-- but some forms of knowledge
absolutely get copyrighted, and they're lobbying for even greater
powers over what people can read, write, and share.  In the past, for
example, some entities have even claimed 'copyright' to try to limit
distribution of knowledge of the specific 'special whole numbers--
since those numbers were the ones they picked as "keys" when setting
up their content encryption system.

To bring things full circle,  I think what we, collectively, are
asserting is that culture is, in fact, a very essential type of
educational knowledge.

There are two big myths I wish I could debunk:     One is "The Myth of
Non-Educational Knowledge"--   all information is educational, but
some sets of information are certainly more educational than others;
it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy.

The secomd myth is what I'd call 'The Myth of the Superiority of High
Culture"--  basically the idea that operas and classical music are
somehow a 'more important' culture to document than, say, anime or
jazz.  In practice, 'high culture' usually means 'the culture of the
most affluent'.  All culture,  whether scientific, encyclopedic,  high
art, low art, pop culture,  kitsch, criminal, idiosyncratic, or even
literally hunter-gather tribal culture-- all cultures are important to
document so we can understand our fellow humans.

Our species has important work to do.   The more that binds us
together, the better.   Perhaps the things that bind us will simple
cultural artifacts just like this--   things like a common love of the
images of M.C. Escher, the films of Alfred Hitchcock,  or the writings
of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Culture is knowledge.