About

From Freedom Buyer

The aim of this project is to organise campaigns to liberate creative works, by raising funds to pay the copyright holder a one-off fee to make the work free (as in freedom) content. This involves removing certain legal and practical restrictions on its use, so that anyone who receives a copy of it after it's been liberated can freely copy and modify it. Please see the Criteria for Liberated Works page for the exact freedoms allowed by a work once it's been liberated, and more about the different legal and practical restrictions. All creative works can be targeted, such as texts, images, music, films and software (including games).

The best way to raise the funds is generally by using the threshold pledge system. The easiest way to implement this is through Fundable. The advantage of this system is that no-one has to pay anything until enough pledges are raised to pay the full fee requested by the copyright holder, so they know they won't have to pay anything unless the work is successfully liberated, and it avoids the difficulty of having to refund any money.

There's a list of suggested works to be targeted for liberation on the Suggested Works page. To find out more about how to liberate a work, please see the How to Liberate a Work page.

Note: We know that any creative work involving any form of skill or effort to produce is more than just 'content'. The term 'free content' is just a good term to refer to all types of creative works which are free as in freedom.

[edit] Why we should pay to liberate works

Some people might think, "I like this work, but I've already got a copy of it. Why would I want to pay more money to liberate it?". There are various reasons why liberating a work is beneficial for people who like it:

• People often want to make copies of a work they like and share them. Normally, this is illegal because of copyright law, and sometimes impossible because of practical restrictions. However, if the work is liberated, they can legally do this.

• Similarly, some people want to build upon a work they like to make derivative works, and release their derivatives. This is also normally illegal, and sometimes impossible. If a work is liberated, they can legally do this as well. Other people who like the work are also likely to benefit from this, as it can result in new and interesting works being produced by building upon the original work.

Some people might also think "Why should I pay money to liberate the work when I can just rely on other people to do it and still get the benefits?" In reality, this isn't generally a problem, because whether or not someone contributes funds to a campaign affects the likelihood of it being successful. The more people contribute funds to the campaign, and the higher amounts they pay, the more likely it is that the work will be successfully liberated. In practice, the more a particular person wants it to be liberated, the more likely they are to contribute funds, and the higher the amount they're likely to pay.

Making copies of a creative work, either modified or unmodified, doesn't involve taking anything from the author or publisher, because a creative work is simply information, which can be copied an infinite amount of times without destroying any of the existing copies. The copyright holder still has the same amount of copies they had before, and the same amount of money they had before. That also means that the amount of effort required to create a work doesn't depend on the number of copies made. This fact should be celebrated, not feared, as it is by some people.

This system of liberating works allows people to have the freedom to copy and modify certain creative works as they choose, while still allowing the copyright holder (usually the author or publisher) to receive a one-off payment of their choice (as long as the people liberating the work are willing to pay it).