User:Msikma/Licensing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
|
Msikma > Why is my content multi-licensed?
|
|
This user is from Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
This user is a computer programmer.
This user is a graphic designer.
This user has a photostream on Flickr.
This user multi-licenses his contributions under the CC-BY-SA 2.5.
This user is not eligible to vote in the 2008 United States presidential election, but encourages those that are to vote for the social and democratic ideology.
|
Somebody once said that "sharing knowledge is duplicating knowledge". The reason why we are able to learn new things is because someone took the time to teach us—or because we were fortunate enough to read a document that someone else wrote for us.
The sharing of information When the printing press was invented, information suddenly became accessible at a level never seen before. Any kind of written document or manuscript could be copied with very little effort, and these documents became ordinary possessions that anyone could afford to have. But they were still paper documents, and as such, there was still the need for physical transportation in order for it to reach other people. And however easy printing was, one would still need to have a printing press to do it. It wasn't until the invention of the computer that such things became unnecessary; once digitized, documents become impervious to physical damage or decay, allowing them to last indefinitely. Anyone could read them without needing to print them onto paper first. When the Internet came into existence, so did the possibility to copy and distribute those documents effortlessly. Just choose who should receive which file, and then tell the computer to send it. That's all there is to it! However, the ability to freely make use of that possibility is still quite restricted at times due to the issue of copyright. How useful wouldn't it be to have all of the world's information in a state where any human being can access it for free, without any limitations whatsoever? The Internet itself is the perfect platform for making this happen, as it is a free and unregulated network that anyone can access and contribute to. It's for this reason that we need to create a body of useful information that cannot be incarcerated by whatever unreasonable wishes its author wants to effect on it. It should be freely released onto the Internet with the idea that if nobody owns the information, everybody does. What does "freedom" mean in this context? asdf |
