I've organised a session at the annual iCommons summit, this year being held in the lovely Dubrovnik, Croatia. The panel and audience will debate the philosophy of the commons; here's the blurb: "What do we mean by ‘free culture’? Is it just a reaction against copyright, or a broader positive movement for the arts? Should we take our inspiration from the free software movement, and if not what philosophical and tactical differences should we account for? Debate over the Creative Commons non-commercial licenses, and the diversity of approaches on show at the iSummit, suggest we have plenty of disagreements to resolve or reinforce!" With the session I hope to stimulate some critical thinking about the commons, and some reflection on what we are working to build, promote or attack.

The argument I will present is based upon my MA Philosophy dissertation and a few years of "in the trenches" work with free culture projects like Remix Reading and Free Culture UK. It's also something I'm currently working up into a book, which I'll finish if I can find a publisher interested in it. My main aim is to sound a note of caution for those working on definitions like Freedom Defined and the Open Knowledge Foundation. Read on for a synopsis of my argument...

Definitions of free culture serve three interesting purposes: they specify a set of principles around which a community can rally, that outsiders can use to understand the community's beliefs, and against which the community can judge the worthiness of particular projects and organisations. Rather like a party manifesto, they draw a line in the sand and say "this is what we stand for". The problem with both of the definitions above is that they lack any intellectual clout. For example, the Definition of Free Cultural Works has a list of permissible restrictions familiar to any copyleft advocate, but of course they don't think a non-commercial restriction is permissible. Why not? It's not difficult to argue that a well designed non-commercial restriction (rather than a ludicrously broad definition) can enlarge the creative freedom of an individual or community by helping them to finance the materials required, without excessively or unjustly curtailing the cultural freedoms of others. What can the definitions say in reply? Well, very little really.

There are some more convincing philosophical responses to the problem, "what is free culture", and I've got Banjamin Mako Hill and David Berry sitting on the panel with me to put two of the best across. But Mako still wants to tie free culture to the free software tradition, and Berry pushes libre culture as part of a radical attack on state capitalism; both approaches have their problems.

My free culture argument can be put quite simply, although a proper defence would take me a good hour to get through:

1. Any property system needs an organising principle, something that gives the system coherence and allows laymen to apply it without gaining legal qualifications. So private property is organised around the principle of ownership - if you own an object I know what that means, and any complicated laws that add duties and burdens to your ownership only apply in cases where it's reasonable to expect you to hire a professional lawyer, e.g. if you own a public housing estate or a gun.
2. The organising principle of copyright is also ownership, the claim is that I own this text I am writing. But copyright has a limited term, there are many different kinds of copyright, it is riddled with exceptions (e.g. fair dealing and fair use), and those exceptions vary between nations. The lack of public understanding of this horrendously complex system of property is manifest in our widespread violation of copyright. People simply don't understand, or don't agree with, the notion that we can't make copies of CDs for our friends, for example. When a musician says "I own this composition" people will either fail to treat the work as her property, or they will fail to take up the many exceptions available; the organising principle is too weak and compromised to function effectively.
3. One way to resolve this problem is to make copyright more coherent, to push the organising principle more. So steps like extending copyright on recordings in the EU to harmonise it with the US term, and extending Digital Rights Management technology into all devices and media, are seen as positive. They reinforce the idea that creators own their intellectual product and should be able to enforce the terms of use just as with physical private property.
4. But of course this massively curtails our ability to engage in cultural activities like remixing music and sharing books with friends; the free culture movement is a response to this. So it leads us to ask: is ownership the appropriate organising principle for a system of property dealing with cultural artefacts?
5. After a lot of work in my dissertation I arrived at an alternative organising principle: attribution. At the very least, we can say that "I made this". Any arrangements that follow from this principle then need to be defended in terms of their capacity to enlarge our real freedom to engage in cultural activities; real freedom includes the materials conditions of those activities, for example I don't really have the freedom to make rock music if I am too poor to get access to a guitar.
6. We can understand cultural activity in terms of four principles: consuming, producing, learning and sharing. They aren't exclusive modes; I don't passively consume when looking at a painting, I also learn from it, I interpret it (a productive response) and I might share my thoughts with friends.
7. The challenge, then, is to develop a proper understanding of cultural activity, and to develop spaces and tools (be they software, licenses, projects, whatever) that enlarge our real cultural freedom. Copyright needs to be massively simplified, and reordered around attribution, with additional rights serving real cultural freedom rather than the economy or any individual's desire to gain a pension from a pop song.

My argument doesn't lead to a clear definition, you can't say "this license isn't free", which is deliberate because I think that statement is nonsensical. But it does lead to a rallying cry, one that matches the free culture movement's actions quite well, and one that is based upon what I consider to be a coherent and well argued critique of copyright. It also widens the scope of our work beyond copyright to look at things that really concern people: how can I finance my community theatre? how can I get my sculptures exhibited? what's stopping me from performing in a cover band?

If you're able, come to the panel at the iSummit and join the debate!