-
@ Open Source Culture
2025-02-12 14:14:12
Open Source Culture represents the simple idea that ideas are free. That information yearns to be free. We acknowledge that copyright laws are unsuitable for a world that’s highly digitized; where content and information are, and should be, abundant and readily available for anyone.
If the information you have is truly valuable for the world, then you do not sell it. You give it away for free. You let it do the good that it can in the world, and know that both yourself and others will be rewarded for it.
If you create content that can be digitally distributed and you charge people before accessing your content, then that tells me that you are actually uncertain of the value of your work. Why? Because if you were certain that whatever it is you are trying to sell had any substantial worth, then you would trust these people to pay you in one way or the other, retroactively. The distinction between *price* and *value* is critical in this framework because, as Jeff Booth succinctly said: “*Prices fall to the marginal cost of production.*” The marginal cost of production for digital data is already effectively zero and it is getting exponentially cheaper day by day. That has nothing to do with the *value* of the very same data, though. Prices are mere agreements. Value is innate.
“*Value for value*” is real, it's based on trust and abundance, which are both lacking in a society built on fiat money and perceived scarcity, which is why I understand the skepticism behind those ideas and a propensity to put a price tag on everything.
Copyright laws are not useful for us anymore at a time when we are moving towards abundance. Digital scarcity only makes sense in digital money, not information.
*First mover advantage* is the only real intellectual property right. In another sense, bitcoin is the only real intellectual property anyway. It’s the only thing that’s scarce. All the rest of it can be as abundant as we let it be.
"Intellectual property" are, after all, mere ideas and no one can "own" ideas.
Copyright laws are nothing else than an impediment to creativity and a gatekeeper to knowledge. Charging money for information, which in digital form is near-free to store and transfer, might as well be considered a form of usury.
We shall free information and with it, we will free creativity, discourse, innovation, imagination, cooperation; and, in its totality, nothing less than the human spirit itself.
*Written by Kontext*
*Published: block height 883,435*
*Download the .PDF: [https://satosh.ee/product/open-source-culture-manifesto/](https://satosh.ee/product/open-source-culture-manifesto/)*