For those of you who haven’t had any contact with the Free Culture movement, I suggest you do some reading. Pioneered by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, the Free Culture movement concentrates on a number of things, the most interesting of which (to me, of course) is the concept of proprietary culture.

But wait, you said this was about Free Culture! Well yes, it is, but only because of it’s exclusive opposite, the proprietary culture. I’ve already discussed this to some degree, but proprietary culture involves a culture in which the products of culture (music, art, literature, etc.) are owned by commercial interests and may now be used in any other cultural production through the miracle of copyright.