W7. Why Free Culture matters?

Why Free Culture matters?

Summary and Interesting Point

 I understand that free culture is a phenomenon in which the potential for creative cultural activities is realized by moving away from excessive protection of copyright. In my opinion, the reason why free culture is so important is because it contributes to preventing society from being drawn down by being creative. Since the advent of the Web 2.0 era, barriers to entry into various production activities have been lowered. The number of content producers has grown exponentially, and we live in a much more diverse society than ever before. As production or creative activities become more active, society's flow chart quickly changes, and the cycle of " new " becomes " old " is also shortened. That is, something that has been valuable before quickly becomes unnecessary and unsuitable. So it became necessary to have an active creative activity.


 Cultural creativity, however, is not a product of wealth from nothing, but a chain of activities based on existing creations. Therefore, it is necessary to have a wide range of social sharing of existing creations to enable active creations. However, the current copyright law brand sharing a culture as illegal regardless of its commercial nature. There is also a side that is hurting free culture by ensuring copyright protection periods are too long.


 For this reason, the Creative Commons movement has also emerged, targeting creative sharing of cultures. It calls for a fundamental review of copyright related institutions, including copyright law, to unlock the potential of creative cultural activities that have expanded greatly with the development of the Internet and IT technologies.

Discussion

 There are numerous discussions going on around the world over copyright systems. But I wonder how meaningful these discussions are in our current society. There is an argument now that copyright is too restrictive but I do not agree with it. We can still use sound sources, movies and other creations for non-commercial purposes without difficulty.


 If you want to use other people's creations for personal gain, isn't it fair to pay a decent price for them? I would like to debate whether the current copyright law is so restrictive as to undermine the potential of creative cultural activity.