While researching potential publication avenues for my research paper on piracy I found myself exploring the citations from Wiki's page for the Free Culture Movement. This led me to R Polk Wagner's eye-opening paper,
Information wants to be free: intellectual property and the mythologies of control (2003).
The citations are packed with this and other fantastic articles - essential reading for anyone interested in Free Culture.
Many of the papers on the subject made reference to Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's book,
Free Culture.
Lessig (for those unfamiliar) co-founded Creative Commons, was a board member of the Free Software Foundation, and briefly ran in the 2016 presidential election on a single-issue platform to pass The Citizen Equality Act. He has been a persistent figure in the fight for Fair Use and copyright reform for decades.
I'd downloaded copies of his books,
Free Culture (2004) and
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008) three years ago but was quickly distracted by Siva Vaidhyanathan's book,
The Anarchist in the Library and so his ebooks were unceremoniously "shelved".
A quick read of
Free Culture's introduction and ToC instantly had me hooked and I knew that this (and likely his Remix book) deserved proper copies for my library.
In fewer than 60 seconds on Amazon, I purchased a clean 1st printing with dust jacket (for $4 frikkin dollars), from a small bookshop in a neighboring city which should arrive in only a few days. (I love the internet.)
I'm sincerely looking forward to some impassioned reading!
