Libre Culture
What is libre culture?
Libre culture is all about empowering people. While the general philosophy stems greatly from the free software movement, libre culture is much broader and encompasses other aspects of culture such as music, movies, food, technology, etc.
Some beliefs include but aren't limited to:
- That copyright should expire after a certain period of time.
- That knowledge should be available to people, not locked away.
- That no entity should have unjust control or possession of others.
- That mass surveillance is about mass control, not justice.
- That we can all band together to help liberate each other.
Check out this link for more.
Rules
I've looked into the ways other forums handle rules, and I've distilled their policies down into two simple ideas.
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Please show common courtesy: Let's make this community one that people want to be a part of.
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Please keep posts generally on topic
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No NSFW content
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When sharing a Libre project, please include the name of its license in the title. For example: “Project name and summary (GPL-3.0)”
Libre culture is a very very broad topic, and while it's perfectly okay for a conversation to stray, I do ask that we keep things generally on topic.
Related Communities
- Libre Culture Memes
- Open Source
- ActivityPub
- Linux
- BSD
- Free (libre) Software Replacements
- Libre Software
- Libre Hardware
Helpful Resources
- The Respects Your Freedom Certification
- Libre GNU/Linux Distros
- Wikimedia Foundation
- The Internet Archive
- Guide to DRM-Free Living
- LibreGameWiki
- switching.software
- How to report violations of the GNU licenses
- Creative Commons Licenses
Community icon is from Wikimedia Commons and is public domain.
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Nobody has really pitched an idea that's caught on.
Society is complicated. Who's going to develop drugs that aren't profitable? Who's going to hold others accountable? Who decides what to teach?
What if there's tradeoffs in the new system? If it doesn't work for some small group but works for plenty others? Would we struggle too much as a society to accept the new system, even if it's better overall?
Big ideas don't work unless they're forced top-down or opt-in. With so many fundamental blockades, all we can do is keep our heads down and chaotically charge forwards.
That's easily solved. Patents are the crutch that causes that problem.
How so? I don't see a way around the central problem under a market system that it takes a large amount of money to bring a potential drug to the market, and at any step it may fail at the cost of billions of dollars. A planned economy would just shift that decision from market forces to the decisions of government bureaucrats who may or may not know what they're doing.
It takes a lot of money to bring any product of any kind to market, even if it is simple and not novel. What you mean to say is you only see 2 options, artificial scarcity / monopoly (aka patents) or planned economy.
But these are not the only 2 options. With patents, the argument is, the only way to make sure a manufacturer is able to recoup their development cost is to grant monopoly, that the only way to provide incentive for further development of new drugs is the reward of false scarcity. This is simply not true.
Let's imagine a world where all invention and scientific discovery is always public domain, Pro Bono Populi. If there is no profit motive to find that one drug that everyone needs and continuously sell more of it, there is now a profit motive to continuously find new drugs that someone needs. This actually encourages development of drugs and therapies that are niche, it also encourages cures over lifetime therapies. Competition is moved to the good of humanity rather than the good of one person's purse.
It really is that simple.
This doesn't make much sense to me. The company has to recoup that cost of R & D, which currently happens via a higher price on new drugs. If generic producers can simply piggyback on R & D immediately, the developing company can't charge a higher price for new drugs. And the idea that the company would then dump a bunch more money into new therapies that in return yield no profit is wishful thinking.