This article was originally published on RelevantMagazine.com.
I don't know when it began. The moment when Napster launched, maybe. Whenever it was, it set off a cultural ripple infecting the masses with an insatiable desire for more, faster and free. It's called the free culture movement, and it advocates increased access to creative goods with no strings attached. Free culturalists believe that restricting access to cultural goods and creating processes designed to turn profits actually hinders creativity. They say restrictive laws such as copyrights serve as negative feedbacks, diminishing the creativity they are designed to promote.
The Internet has only made things worse ... or better, depending on your perspective. International access to the Web is difficult to police and has revealed natural limits of protective laws. With the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing systems, it has never been easier to find and acquire whatever you desire without paying a shilling for it. Some claim this produces a society of pirates and thieves, while others say the real problem is the laws that restricted access to these things in the first place. Free culturalists crave the permission to freely use, enhance and develop creative goods in a world where remix is an art form.
Piracy doesn’t matter?
Lawrence Lessig is regarded as the "father of the free culture movement" and author of Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. He responds to charges of so-called piracy by saying, "Just at the time digital technology could unleash an extraordinary range of commercial and noncommercial creativity, the law burdens this creativity with insanely complex and vague rules and with the threat of obscenely severe penalties." Lessig isn't anti-capitalist or even anti-commercial. In his recent book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, he argues that culture is best served by legal systems that balance commercialism and sharing. While the real crime in his mind is smothering creative collaboration, the answer is not killing commercialism.
Now more than ever, people are looking for more access to more stuff for less money and fewer stipulations. Everything must be recreated in a free culture. Those things you learned in freshman marketing class? Might want to reconsider some of it. Old business models are rendered useless. Best-selling authors are now expected to post regularly high-quality content on personal blogs, and many are now giving away free digital copies of their books for an initial period after the release. It seems new paradigms must be applied to music, art, literature and even religion.
The reality of the new paradigm
Media giant Apple has taken full advantage of free culture. On iTunes U, Apple offers free education. Through this open service, users can access thousands of free lectures from prestigious universities. And who can overlook the iPhone, Apple’s mobile-device-turned-obsession? One of its biggest selling points is the thousands of free apps available for download.
In the music world, Radiohead showed us that free culture could actually be a good thing. The famed British rock band released its seventh studio album In Rainbows in late 2007 as a free digital download. Patrons could offer to pay as much or as little as they wanted for the album. Forty percent of Americans opted to pay for the album, offering nearly $10 US on average. Had Radiohead opted for the traditional model, they would have earned around $1 US per album. In Rainbows debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, going on to sell millions of copies and winning two Grammy Awards.
The typically-behind Christian world has made a few attempts to adapt to the culture shift, and leading the way is publishers. Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins and one of the nation’s largest Christian publishers, has begun giving books away. Yes, that’s right. Giving them away. In 2009, several Zondervan titles such as Andrew Farley’s The Naked Gospel and Gary Thomas’ Pure Pleasure were available for a limited time as a free digital download. Both titles maintain strong Amazon rankings and have done well in the marketplace.
And the church
Fewer strides have been made in the Church world. Most church services still end with a traditional call for “His tithe and your offering,” which can be off-putting to a generation that wants to give out of gratitude rather than guilt. In a free culture, the last thing you want to communicate is a pay-to-play model.
LifeChurch.tv in Oklahoma has certainly made strides to adapt. Their website offers free creative church resources, and they were among the first to offer an Internet campus where parishioners don’t even have to spend gas to join a worship service. Perhaps their most notable contribution is YouVersion, the wildly popular online bible available for mobile devices at no charge.
In New Jersey, Reformed Church of Highland Park opened up A Better World Café, a restaurant that supplanted the common pay system with an innovative pay-what-you-can model. Patrons of this ministerial venture can eat as much as they want and pay whatever they can afford. The nonprofit eatery attracts as many as 125 customers per day and utilizes mostly locally grown produce. The menu only offers “suggested prices,” and if patrons can’t afford to pay anything for their meal, they can volunteer at the café to cover it.
Some might think this movement is a negative cultural turn attempting to destabilize a social system that works fine. But these churches and organizations have simply recast their mission in the midst of this movement. Good or bad, free culture is our reality. It’s our world. Luckily, more than 2,000 years of history illustrate that the Christian way transcends cultural changes. Until my crystal ball arrives in the mail, I can’t predict what the future holds for the Christian world in light of free culture. But I’d pay to find out.
Check out this "remix" of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture:
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Check out Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
Adam Shields said:
That is more negative take than what I would give it. Historically culture has been free. Music was passed from one player to another and stories where shared, re-told and modified. The US constitution specifically calls for there to be a limit on how long copyrights and patents should exist. Effectively now no cultural work is going into the public domain. Public domain stopped in 1923 and as current law stands nothing new will enter public domain until 2047.
So all works like the classic Disney movies based on public domain stories no longer can happen. And new works like the Grey album are illegal.
I certainly support people being paid for their cultural efforts. But we are in a position now where current law just doesn't make sense. Why should a patent on a physical item only last 20 years, but copyright on an idea last 120? There needs to be a mechanical process, like public music performances, that allow a person to use a cultural work and pay for the right without an approval process.
Posted: February 8, 2010
Josiah Ritchie said:
Since you asked on twitter...
The open source world is more closely aligned with the goals of the church than corporate America. I'm really excited to see the church change and adapt to look for inspiration among open source communities and those promoting openness than the closed doors of the corporations. It seems much of American christianity is locked behind copyrights and entrance fees. Bible studies held at a restaurant means you have to pay to play. Copyrights on bible translations are used to restrict access, but places like BibleGateway.com are helping to bring the bible more accessible, but you still have to pay for Internet access. For that matter, there are important aspects of faith that simply can't be expressed properly through the written word. Service to the community is ultimately a free access to resources that we share with anyone. It's excellent to see this growing again as it expresses elements of the gospel in an important way. If we are truly as big and strong as we say we are, then many of the problems of our culturally disadvantaged would disappear. Perhaps we are big and weak.
I think it comes down to this. The origin of our faith is a free, undeserved gift. What right do we have to lock up the expression and truths that come from the holy spirit inside monetary and physical walls? Shouldn't this seem absurd to us? Perhaps we are starting to see this as the rest of the culture also sees it. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a battle against change/preservation of truth instead of a movement towards the character of God.
All that isn't to say that people shouldn't get paid for working. Many other interesting models exist to promote scholarship. The ChipIn concept is really interesting to me and is taking off in our culture. People are sharing their intentions and asking for support to make it possible so they can give it away to the community. This brings a "pay what you can" idea, but assures the ones making the effort get proper compensation. Some risk does apply that the outcome will not come to fruition, and in this a certain amount of reputation is important. If you are faithful in the investments of the faith community in little projects and demonstrate innovative and helpful results than you'll be more likely get funding for larger things like writing a book.
We already do this with certain things. The "faith-based missions" of many Christian circles represents this. I wouldn't say this of the southern baptist approach, but the individual missionaries who raise their own support are certainly examples, but the structure is woefully lacking in the recognition of accountability and reputation until after the work is already in progress. These are things that churches are responding to now and correcting.
On the topic of this transition, I'd recommend the book "The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture" by Shane Hipps.
Posted: February 9, 2010
Jonathan Merritt said:
Adam,
Great comments. I want to think through something with you, though. (I'm going to play devil's advocate.) You said, "historically, culture has been free." I totally grant that. Good point, actually. But what do we make of the fact that culture today is not as interdependent as it once once? In other words, of course music was free 1500 years ago, but communities worked to feed each other and take care of each other. There were whole societies that could operate with no money whatsoever in those systems. In our current system, however, money is a non-negotiable. If you have no money, you cannot survive. Does this cultural turn change anything? Does it justify a new system where creative goods are sold to help the creator survive?
Jm
Posted: February 9, 2010
Jonathan Merritt said:
Josiah,
Some really, really well-developed thoughts on this. Thanks.
Let me ask you one question for the sake of argument. You mentioned stated, "the origin of our faith is a free, undeserved gift." I agree. Traditional Christian orthodoxy states that somebody had to pay something. In other words, it is free to US but Jesus paid with his life and God the father paid with his own Son. Does this change the dynamic of that thinking or not?
Jm
Posted: February 9, 2010
Adam Shields said:
Jonathan, I think that we are more interdependent now than ever. It used to be that while there was a village or community you lived in you still produced most of your own food, made most of your own clothes, etc. Now many people can barely even cook for themselves, let alone make their own clothes or growth their own food.
The difference is the reach of media and culture, not the change in community. One person can share their cultural good with millions, while in the past it would be rare for a person to share their cultural good with thousands. So we are placing different values on the cultural good.
This affects not only the specialization, but the quality of the good. When there are only a few thousand people that you will interact in your life time, the you have a better chance of being a well know singer in your area. When you can interact with millions, the chances of you being a well known singer are much, much lower. So you get a few people that are well known, but a lot of people, still highly talented, that are less well known than that same person would have been a couple hundred years before.
I also think, there is a difference in culture being free, and the action of the individual being free. So historically, you did not have copyright. A traveling bard would maybe make a little money, but certainly would be fed. So he was paid for the performance, but not for the song writing (which he may not have done.) Now we are paid both for song writing and performance (usually separately.) That is true among other cultural goods as well.
I think it is helpful to separate the cultural idea from the action communicates the idea. So writing a song is different from performing. Creating the ideas in a book is different from printing the book. This allows for the discussion to move from should the individual be paid to should we allow the idea to be modified by others. (Of course it isn't that simple in the real world.)
Posted: February 10, 2010
Dr. P said:
In response to the remark that "historically culture was free." Not so! Historically, culture was paid for and supported by the powers that be: the stories (such as Beowulf) that were passed on first in the oral tradition by the scops were supported by the wealth of the Lord or King. Later when such stories were preserved in written form by the literate monks, this work was supported (paid for) by the Church. Even later, the patronage system provided support by the nobility for the creations of the musicians, painters (such as Michaelangelo) and dramatists (such as Shakespeare). When democratization and the rise of the middle class developed, the patronage system was replaced by the free market and consumers paid for cultural artifacts.
Artists, like other human beings, must eat. If artists are going to have enough time to hone their crafts in order to produce great art, they must be paid, one way or another.
Posted: February 17, 2010
Adam S said:
I think that Dr P and I are talking about different types of free. Yes, cultural goods were supported by people. But the artists didn't claim ownership over the work like ownership is now claimed. There was also much more borrowing of ideas between artists. That borrowing was not considered theft in the way that many artists today consider it theft. Cultural goods were not considered owned in the same way. So I want to still affirm that "historically cultural goods were free in a way that cultural goods are not currently free."
Posted: February 19, 2010