Free content or free information is any kind of functional work artwork or other creative content that meets the free content definition1 and has no significant legal restriction relative to people's freedom: to use or modify the content to distribute copies of the content to distribute works derived from the content.2

Free content is distinct from open content in that it can be modified whereas one might not have this ability with content that is "open" but not "free".

Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because copyright law in most countries by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control over their creations copyrighted content must be explicitly declared free usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.

Though a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free it can become non-free again if the copyright law changes.3 Contents 1 Legality 1.1 Traditional copyright 1.2 Public domain 1.3 Copyleft 2 Usage 2.1 Media 2.2 Software 2.3 Engineering and technology 2.4 Academia 2.5 Governance 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links Legality Traditional copyright Main article: Copyright The copyright symbol

Copyright is a legal concept which grants the author or creator of a work legal rights to control the duplication and public performance of his or her work. In many jurisdictions this is limited by a time period after which the works then enter the public domain. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be copied modified or publicly performed with the consent of the author unless the use is a fair use.

Traditional copyright control limits the use of the work of the author to those who can or are willing to afford the payment of royalties to the author for usage of the authors content or limit their use to fair use. Secondly it limits the use of content whose author cannot be foundcitation needed. Finally it creates a perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works such as mashups and collaborative contentcitation needed. Public domain Main article: Public domain A public domain symbol

The public domain is a range of creative works whose copyright has expired or was never established; as well as ideas and factsnb 1 which are ineligible for copyright. A public domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished to the public or no longer can claim control over the distribution and usage of the work. As such any person may manipulate distribute or otherwise utilize the work without legal ramifications. A work released into the public domain or under a very liberal license by its author may be referred to as "copycenter".4 Copyleft Main articles: Copyleft and Share-alike The copyleft symbol

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work.5 The aim of copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to reuse and in many licensing schemes modify content that is created by an author. Unlike public domain or other non-copyleft free work the author still maintains copyright over the material however the author has granted a non-exclusive license to any person to distribute and often modify the work. Copyleft licenses require that any derivative works be distributed under the same terms and that the original copyright notices be maintained.

A symbol commonly associated with copyleft is a reversal of the copyright symbol facing the other way; the opening of the C points left rather than right. Unlike the copyright symbol the copyleft symbol does not have a codified meaning.6 Usage Projects that provide free content exist in several areas of interest such as software academic literature general literature music images video and engineering. Technology has reduced the cost of publication and reduced the entry barrier sufficiently to allow for the production of widely disseminated materials by individuals or small groups. Projects to provide free literature and multimedia content have become increasingly prominent owing to the ease of dissemination of materials that is associated with the development of computer technology. Such dissemination may have been too costly prior to these technological developments. Media In media which includes textual audio and visual content free licensing schemes such as some of the licenses made by Creative Commons have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all of the Creative Commons licenses are entirely free: their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Since February 2008 Creative Commons licenses which are entirely free carry a badge indicating that they are "approved for free cultural works".7 Repositories exist which exclusively feature free material provide content such as photographs clip art music8 and literature.9 While extensive reuse of free content from one website in another website is legal it is usually not sensible because of the duplicate content problem. Website that is largely an exact copy of another website ranks way lower in search engines so every successful project tries to present something different. Software Main article: Open source The logo of the Open Source Initiative an organization dedicated to promoting open source software Free software often referred to as open source software is a maturing technology with major companies utilising free software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration. Open source development models have been classified as having a similar peer-recognition and collaborative benefit incentives that are typified by more classical fields such as scientific research with the social structures that result from this incentive model decreasing production cost.10 Given sufficient interest in a given software component by using peer-to-peer distribution methods distribution costs of software may be minimized removing the burden of infrastructure maintenance from developers. As distribution resources are simultaneously provided by consumers these software distribution models are scalable that is the method is feasible regardless of the number of consumers. In some cases free software vendors may use peer-to-peer technology as a method of dissemination.11 In general project hosting and code distribution is not a problem for the most of free projects as a number of providers offer them these services for free. Engineering and technology Free content principles have been translated into fields such as engineering where designs and engineering knowledge can be readily shared and duplicated in order to reduce overheads associated with project development. Open design principles can be applied in engineering and technological applications with projects in mobile telephony small-scale manufacture12 the automotive industry1314 and even agricultural areas.15 Technologies such as distributed manufacturing can allow computer-aided manufacturing and computer-aided design techniques to be able to develop small-scale production of components for the development of new or repair of existing devices. Rapid fabrication technologies underpin these developments which allow end users of technology to be able to construct devices from pre-existing blueprints using software and manufacturing hardware to convert information into physical objects. The logo of the Free Software Foundation the organization founding the principles of free software. Academia Main article: Open access (publishing) The open access logo originally designed by the Public Library of Science In academic work free works are still a niche phenomenon owing to the difficulty and cost of maintaining a fully qualified peer review process. Authorswho may see open access publishing as a method of expanding the audience that is able to access their work to allow for greater impact of the publication or for ideological reasons.161718 Groups such as the Public Library of Science and Biomed Central provide capacity for review and publishing of free works; though such publications tend to be limited to fields such as life sciences. Some universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have adopted open access publishing by default.19 In traditional journals alternatives such as delayed free publications or charging researchers for open access publishing are occasionally used.2021 Some funding agencies such as the National Institutes for Health require academic work to be published in the public domain as a grant requirement.2223 Open content publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with information retrieval in researchaccording to whom as universitiesweasel words typically pay to subscribe for access to content that is published through traditional means 242526 whilst improving journal quality by discouraging the submission of research articles of reduced quality.26 Subscriptions for non-free content journals may be expensive to universities themselves particularly noteworthy when coupled to the fact that the content in the scientific articles are generated and peer-reviewed by the university staff themselves at no cost to the publisher. This has led to disputes between publishers and some universities over subscription costs such as the one which occurred between the University of California and the Nature Publishing Group.2728 For teaching purposes some universitieswho provide freely available course content such as lecture notes video resources and tutorials. This content is distributed via internet resources to the general public. Publication of such resources may be either by a formal institution-wide program29 or alternately via informal content provided by individual academics or departments. Governance Main article: Open source governance Technological developmentswhich have enabled distribution of otherwise inaccessible documentation in government to be made directly available to citizens from any location for minimal cost. This allows information on lawmaking local and state government to be analysed by a government's constituents. Although previously information has been in the form of media releases for public relations purposes documentation that may be of use to citizens and businesses has in some jurisdictionswhich been mandated to be released by default.30 This is in contrast to laws such as the freedom of information act or their local equivalent which may make documentation available only on request rather than mandate explicit publication. According to the Journal of Public Administration such a stance has been cited as an aid to the reduction in complexity associated with government processes as well as aiding a reduction in corruption. 31 See also A Freebox in Berlin Germany 2005 serving as a distribution center for free donated materials Free software portal Definition of Free Cultural Works Free and open source software Free art Free culture movement Freedom of information Free software movement Libre knowledge Open Content Alliance Open publishing Open-source hardware Permissive free software licence Project Gutenberg Notes The copyright status of uncreative aggregates of basic data may differ by region for the USA see Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service for Australia see Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems References http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition Stallman Richard (November 13 2008). "Free Software and Free Manuals". Free Software Foundation. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Anderson Nate (July 16 2008). "EU caves to aging rockers wants 45-year copyright extension". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080716-eu-caves-to-aging-rockers-wants-45-year-copyright-extension.html. Retrieved August 8 2008.  Raymond Eric S.. "Copycenter". The Jargon File. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/copycenter.html. Retrieved August 9 2008.  Dusollier S (2003). Open source and copyleft. Authorship reconsidered. Columbia journal of Law and the Arts. 26.  Hall G. Brent (2008). Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling. Springer. p. 29. ISBN 354074830X. http://books.google.com/idJZNuu8XODQMC&pgPA29&lpgPA29&dqcopyleft+symbol+legal+meaning. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Linksvayer Mike (February 20 2008). "Approved for Free Cultural Works". Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8051. Retrieved March 22 2009.  "iRate Radio". SourceForge.net. http://irate.sourceforge.net/. Retrieved March 22 2009.  "Gutenberg:No Cost or Freedom". Project Gutenberg. April 23 2007. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:NoCostorFreedom%3F. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Mustonen Mikko (PDF). Copyleft the economics of Linux and other open source software. Discussion Paper No. 493. Department of Economics University of Helsinki. http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/herkia/kava/Seminnarit/MImustonen.pdf. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Pawlak Michel; Bryce Ciarn; Laurire Stphane (May 29 2008). "The Practice of Free and Open Source Software Processes" (PDF). Rapport de recherche. inria-00274193 version 2 (Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA)) N 6519 (April 2008). ISSN 0249-6399. http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/28/33/44/PDF/RR-6519.pdf. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Hendry Andrew (March 4 2008). "RepRap: An open-source 3D printer for the masses". Computerworld Australia. The Industry Standard. http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/04/reprap-open-source-3d-printer-masses. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Honsig Markus (January 25 2006). "The most open of all cars" (in German). Technology Review. Heinz Heise. http://www.heise.de/tr/Das-offenste-aller-Autos--/artikel/68663/. Retrieved March 22 2009.  "Australian drive for green commuter cars". http://smh.drive.com.au/australian-drive-for-green-commuter-cars-20100613-y64q.html. Retrieved 100613.  Stewart Jr. C. Neal (December 2005). "Open-source Agriculture" (PDF). ISB News Report. Information Systems for Biotechnology (ISB). http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/artspdf/dec0501.pdf. Retrieved March 22 2009.  "Open access self-archiving: An author study". http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/1/jisc2.pdf.  Andrew Theo (October 30 2003). "Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff". Ariadne (UKOLN) (37). ISSN 1361-3200. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue37/andrew/. Retrieved March 22 2009.  Key Perspectives. "JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey Report" (PDF). Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploadeddocuments/JISCOAreport1.pdf. Retrieved March 22 2009.  "MIT faculty open access to their scholarly articles". MIT news. 20 March 2009. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/open-access-0320.html.  "Policy of the Society for General Microbiology towards author self-archiving on PubMed Central and institutional and other repositories". http://mic.sgmjournals.org/misc/selfarchiving.dtl. Retrieved April 10 2009.  "OnlineOpen". http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html. Retrieved April 10 2009.  Haslam Maryanne. "NHMRC Partnership Projects Funding Policy" (PDF). National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/partnerships/files/fundingpolicy.pdf. Retrieved March 22 2009. dead link "Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research". http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not-od-05-022.html. Retrieved July 12 2009.  Mayor Susan (April 19 2003). "Libraries face higher costs for academic journals". BMJ: British Medical Journal (BMJ Group) 326 (7394): 840. PMC 1125769.  "AMS Journal price survey". http://www.ams.org/membership/journal-survey.html. Retrieved May 23 2009.  a b "Costs and business models in scientific research publishing: A report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust". http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@policycommunications/documents/webdocument/wtd003184.pdf. Retrieved May 23 2009.  "Response from the University of California to the Public statement from Nature Publishing Group regarding subscription renewals at the California Digital Library". http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/UCResponsetoNaturePublishingGroup.pdf.  Hawkes Nigel (November 10 2003). "Boycott 'greedy' journal publishers say scientists". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1013152.ece.  "About OpenCourseWare". http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm. Retrieved April 10 2009.  "Motion on Notice: Open Data Open Standards and Open Source". http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20090519/documents/motionb2.pdf. / Cho Yong Hyo; Choi Byung-Dae (10 January 2005). "E-Government to Combat Corruption: The Case of Seoul Metropolitan Government". International Journal of Public Administration 27: 719735. doi:10.1081/PAD-200029114.  Further reading D. Atkins J. S. Brown A. L. Hammond (February 2007). A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements Challenges and New Opportunities.. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. http://cohesion.rice.edu/Conferences/Hewlett/emplibrary/A%20Review%20of%20the%20Open%20Educational%20Resources%20(OER)%20MovementBlogLink.pdf.  OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: Giving Knowledge for free The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. 2007 ISBN 926403174X. External links Definition of Free Cultural Works A definition of "free content" or "free cultural works" similar to the free software definition "Episodes of collective invention" (PDF) (Peter B. Meyer; August 4 2003) article on several U.S.-oriented historical examples of free content in technology Open Knowledge Definition project under the aegis of the Open Knowledge Foundation which provides a definition of "open" suitable for content and data What is free content on WikiEducator For the use of free content on Wikipedia see Wikipedia:Free content. v d eIntellectual property activism Issues and debates Copyright infringement  Criticism of intellectual property  Criticism of patents  Digital rights management  Gripe site  History of music piracy  Mashup videos and music  Public domain  Software patent debate Concepts All rights reversed  Copyleft  Commercial use of copyleft works  Commons-based peer production  Free content  Free software licence  Infoanarchism  Libertarian positions  Open content  Open design  Open Music Model  Open patent  Open source hardware  Open source software  Share-alike Movements Access to Knowledge movement  Anti-copyright  Cultural environmentalism  Free culture movement  Free software movement Organizations Creative Commons  Electronic Frontier Foundation  Free Software Foundation  Open Rights Group  The Pirate Bay  Piratbyrn  Pirate Party  Students for Free Culture Documentaries Steal This Film (2006 2007)  Good Copy Bad Copy (2007)  RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008)