Free content
Therefore, copyrighted content must be explicitly declared free by the authors, which is usually accomplished by referencing or including licensing statements from within the work.
These freedoms given to users in the reuse of works (that is, the right to freely use, study, modify or distribute these works, possibly also for commercial purposes) are often associated with obligations (to cite the original author, to maintain the original license of the reused content) or restrictions (excluding commercial use, banning certain media) chosen by the author.
An analogy is a use of the rival terms free software and open-source, which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.
[10] Finally, it creates a perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works, such as mashups and collaborative content.
[14] The aim of copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to reuse and, in many licensing schemes, modify content that is created by an author.
Copyleft licenses require that any derivative works be distributed under the same terms and that the original copyright notices be maintained.
Projects to provide free literature and multimedia content have become increasingly prominent owing to the ease of dissemination of materials that are associated with the development of computer technology.
[16] Repositories exist which exclusively feature free material and provide content such as photographs, clip art, music,[17] and literature.
The ease of dissemination increases modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.
Some claim that open source development models offer similar peer-recognition and collaborative benefit incentive as in more classical fields such as scientific research, with the social structures that result leading to decreased production costs.
Open design principles can be applied in engineering and technological applications, with projects in mobile telephony, small-scale manufacture,[21] the automotive industry,[22][23] and even agricultural areas.
Various funding institutions and governing research bodies have mandated that academics must produce their works to be open-access, in order to qualify for funding, such as the US National Institutes of Health, Research Councils UK (effective 2016) and the European Union (effective 2020).
[31][32] For teaching purposes, some universities, including MIT, provide freely available course content, such as lecture notes, video resources and tutorials.
[9][34] Subscriptions for non-free content journals may be expensive for universities to purchase, though the articles are written and peer-reviewed by academics themselves at no cost to the publisher.
"[37] There are multiple projects and organizations that promote learning through open content, including OpenCourseWare and Khan Academy.
[citation needed] Any country has its own law and legal system, sustained by its legislation, which consists of documents.
In general, a law-document is offered in more than one (open) official version, but the main one is that published by a government gazette.
The openness of content can be assessed under the '5Rs Framework' based on the extent to which it can be retained, reused, revised, remixed and redistributed by members of the public without violating copyright law.
[46] It was put forth by Erik Möller, Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Benjamin Mako Hill, Angela Beesley, and others.
[48] In 2009, the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licenses were marked as "Approved for Free Cultural Works".
[51] In 2007 the OKF gave an Open Knowledge Definition for "content such as music, films, books; data be it scientific, historical, geographic or otherwise; government and other administrative information".
