squash! add free culture binary data essay

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/practical-modifiability-of-free-culture-binary-data.md b/practical-modifiability-of-free-culture-binary-data.md
index 180875b..b9bd6a8 100644
--- a/practical-modifiability-of-free-culture-binary-data.md
+++ b/practical-modifiability-of-free-culture-binary-data.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-Proponents of "Free Culture" present 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".
+Proponents of "Free Culture" present 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 terms: "Free Culture" and "Open Culture" are quite indistinguishable; with both of which being nearly synonymous with: "Creative Commons licensed multimedia". The vast majority of the multimedia labeled as either are individual images or sounds clips; binary blobs by definition, without any reference to the source "layers" that composed the work. This is natural, of course, if the work is very simple (or "flat") such as 2D gaming tiles, textures, and logos; but that is rarely the case for anything elaborate. "Free Culture" present the concept as the superset of which "Free Software" is one subset; but there is a cruicial disconnect in that the licenses mainly recommended for artistic works by "Free Culture" and "Open Culture" proponents alike are non-copyleft licenses. This article is an attempt to truly unify the philosophy of "Free Culture" with that of "Free Software" and to distinguish "Free Culture" from "Open Culture" by embracing copyleft as a core principle of "Free Culture".
 
 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 exhibit even the most basic premise of "Open-Source". 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.
 
@@ -72,6 +72,14 @@ quotes from the often quoted "Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?" ar
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 TODO:
+
+if question at hand is: "is it possible to use this program without any proprtietary adronments?" the naiive answer will be "yes, it is capable of being used with free assets." - but if no such free assets actually exist then that answer does not satisfy the main intention: "is it possible in practice or only *in theory*"
+
+if the only existing assets that could make the software in any way useful are non-free then doesn't the mere distrubution of that program constitute a recommendedation to use non-free assets?
+
+---
+
+TODO:
 arguments for consistency
 
 * 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 -