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+Proponents of "Free Culture" tout the concept as the multimedia equivalent of GPL-licensed "Free Software" in a vacuous attempt to distinguish it from "Open Culture"; but the reality for end-users is far from the same level of freedom provided by the GPL. Practically speaking, the term: "Free Culture" is nearly synonymous with: "Creative Commons Share-Alike licensed multimedia". The vast majority of the multimedia labeled as "Free Culture" are individual images or sounds clips; binary blobs by definition, without any reference to the source "layers" that compose the work. This is natural, of course, if the work is very simple; but that is rarely the case for anything "finished".
+
+The licenses typically recommended by "Free Culture" Proponents, such as the "Creative Commons Share-Alike" and the "Free Art License", merely permit the re-use and re-distribution of specific binary artifacts as long as attribution is preserved; but they do not require that the constituent source materials be made available as does the GPL. As such, they do not even meet the definition of "Open-Source", much less that of "Free Software". Artifacts under such licenses are, in all practicality, more the equivalent of "Free-ware" such as the Microsoft DotNet run-time re-distributables; excepting perhaps for the omission of any language discouraging mutations. To be clear though, any such mutations to blobs are crude at best; far from the precise modifications that the GPL affords for software.
+
+Although these licenses encourage sharing, they neglect ensuring of the freedom to study, experiment, and customize. Experimentation implies de-composition; and as any artist or software developer knows: non-trivial modifications require access to the original sources used by the author. Without these sources, even the project maintainers are prevented from customizing the assets beyond the most trivial operations such as trimming and scaling; which is very much mis-aligned with the spirit of "Free Software". Therfore, these multimedia licenses are not at all the natural companions to GPL-licensed software that they are often touted as. The GPLv3 grants this maximal freedom of expression to a project's artists, developers, and end-users alike; and is, itself, the natural companion license for the artistic binary assets of a GPL-licensed software program provided that the forms of the relevant source materials are well-defined.
+
+TODO:
+* quotes about defining the forms
+* define the forms
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+RE: games and their assets
+
+
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+the GPL in it's current form
+(either implicitly or explicitly)?
+considers binary assets such as artwork and music as program input data as distinct from the program itself and not subject to the corresponding source requirement so long as they are packaged separately
+much as C source code files and binary compiler outputs are not inherently subject to the license of the compiler that processes them
+- this serves primarily to intice the hourdes of game creators with stars in their eyes and the (usually stated, if not boasted) intention to become rich and famous from their creations
+- following this to it's logical conclusion : a game that is 100% functional but silent and with
+every character and all scenery completely black
+
+
+
+???the implication is that mere data is non-essential, dispensible, and interchangeable - it could as well be absent as present or processed by some other tool instead - much as C code is input to GCC so the license of GCC need not apply to the program outputs or inputs???
+
+this could be argued for a game engine which can process very arbitrary inputs as long as some basic syntax or protocol is followed (much as the compiler)
+
+but game data is not arbitrary - a free game with only non-free assets is like a free operating system for which only non-free programs are available - in fact they are identical from the user's perspective - a black screen with no sounds - utterly useless to a freedom-minded user until someone writes some free programs for that platform (or creates some free art to fit that game)
+
+a game is not at all comperable to a compiler - it is not a general purpose tool - it's sole use-case depends intrinsically on it's data existing and existing in a very precisely prescribed way - not just in terms of valid syntax but in every facet of it's form and purpose, the analogy to a dumb data processor does not fit
+
+clearly this is not merely input data flowing through a pipeline for the purpose of producing an output unrelated to the main program - these binary assets are fully imported into the main program memory only for it's intrinsic usage and in a way that can not reasonably be considered as transient but much more akin to library linking
+
+
+TODO:
+
+---
+
+quotes from the often quoted "Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?" article by Richard Stallman https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html
+
+* "Since the art in the game is not software, it is not ethically imperative to make the art free ..."
+  => i agree there is no ethical imperative to make the art free but i also contend there likewise is no ethical imperative to make any games free becuase they are purely recreational as are art or music - to label games as "functional" but their art and music as "non-functional" is ludacris - they are tightly coupled components that serve a single unified "function", namely that of a toy
+
+ * "You as a freedom-lover won't use the nonfree game if it exists, so you won't lose anything if it does not exist."
+  => of course, the very same could be said of a freedom-hater or anyone else for that matter - there would be nothing lost that is of any practical use if no video games ever existed - afterall it's just a game - right? - no different than tic-tac-toe
+
+---
+
+
+* personally, i consider game AS an artwork itself - that i would not want to modify any more than my favorite roger waters album - in both cases, i truly want to experience them as the author intended one could argue about the freedom to copy but that is not the most beneficial feature of copyleft - that particular freedom lends itself more to "free as in beer" than freedom - what makes the GPL shine is that is requires access to source materials providing the freedom to modify; but with respect to an artistic expression of another person, modifications are not anything that i would actually want - in fact, any modifications to an artist's work could be considered to be an act of vandalism and an insult to the artist - like drawing a mustache on the mona lisa - i do not intend to suggest that another person should not be allowed to create a similar work from raw material but this "moaning lucy" would be an expression of that artist if it did not draw directly from ("sample") the original -
+???but that hits on the broader issue of so called "intellectual property"???
+ ^ (this is actually in line wth the FSF view on art but i simply apply the same terms to games as well as art and music)
+
+
+* counter agrument - the above could be taken as strong arguments for applying the same lack of concern for the freedom of game source code as is recommended by the FSF in regards to game assets; but to be un-biased and for the sake on consistency, i present a counter agrument for applying the same urgency to the freedom of game assets -
+
+while the others were presented from the perspective of downstream consumers; there is an equally valid argument from the perspective of an upstream maintainer - what they both have in common though is that they suggest that the same consideration for freedom should apply to both game source code as well as to game assets
+whereas it is not desireable to modify the artistic expression inherent in someone else's work;
+in regards to your own work in progress, it is not only desireable but imperative that you be able to modify contributed assets to fit the program - a demonstration is hardly necessary - this should be abundantly obvious - an external asset that fits into the program 99% is 100% useless unless it is only a mockup (or sloppiness is acceptable) - it is almost certain that images and sounds will need some conditioning at the very least to suit the environment adequately; and without the full coverage of the GPL copyleft applied to the binary assets, the only option is to implore the original artist to make the otherwise trivial adjustments (perhaps on several occasions)