Free Culture or Culture for Free ?
A couple of years ago, I’ve wrote an article about the Free Software licenses. But, since I’ve started to write and sell ebooks online, I’ve noticed something I was already aware of.
There is still a confusion between free and free. In English, free has two meaning :
- Free as a liberty, like “freedom of speech”
- Free as a non paying product, like “free food”
A famous sentence regarding the Free Software is : “To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” “. This is a quote from the introduction of the Free Software Foundation definition.
In French, free has two specific words that avoid this confusion :
- Libre : for the freedom aspect
- Gratuit : for the monetary aspect
But, I’ve still noticed, and even had some questions, regarding why I’m selling my writings despite being licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0. Because for some people, it’s not “free culture”.
First, let’s clear the confusion right now : using a Free Culture license does not mean the creator could not earn money from their work nor selling them. Creative Commons ran a study case of 24 entities working with free license and earning profits in 2017.
The Free Culture is a movement, and has a definition regarding what is a Free Cultural Work or not. In this definition, four criteria has been identified :
- Availability of the source data
- Using a free format
- No technical restrictions
- No other restrictions or limitations
Am I checking these boxes with my ebooks sold on online platforms ?
- Availability of the source data : This item mostly concern the case the final work would be the result of a compilation such as a source code. For example, a Free Culture music should provide the musical composition. In my case, I must admit I don’t provide directly the markdown files of my books with the epub. Mostly because it’s not possible with the publishing platforms. Maybe I could add a page with a link to an archive, or just considerate the epub file being sufficient, because…
- Using a Free format : an epub file is basically a compressed archive containing HTML and CSS documents. It is a standard and an open format. Free softwares such as Calibre (or a lot of other ones) provide an editor allowing to open it and edit it in a more comfortable way than a basic text editor.
My book Le Patient Daniel opened by Calibre’s EPUB editor
- No technical restrictions : My ebooks has not DRM, I hate them. Once you’ve got them, you can do whatever you want with them as long as it respects the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.
- No others restrictions or limitations : Same as above, I don’t restrict any kind of usage once you’ve got the copy of the ebook and respects the license.
So, am I Free Culture compatible or not ?
Maybe the first point could be a matter to debate and I should consider finding a way to ship the markdown sources with the epub file if it’s really necessary for a perfect compliance with this criteria. But I still have the restrictions of the online libraries platforms that won’t permit to do this. A possibility could be to add a mention in the copyright section of the book indicating the owner of the copy may request them. Because the license does not imply to deliver the source data to anyone : just to the person who received the work.
For the three other points, I check the boxes without any questions.
Is selling my ebooks against Free Culture ?
I don’t think so, because these licenses never implied the work do be delivered at no cost. This idea is, to me, a mislead.
