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Your money can buy even free culture. Wikipedia approach.

December 12, 2007

Your money can buy even free culture. Wikipedia approach.

The Fieryangel wonders on the Wikipedia Review blog about the nature of “free” in Wikipedia business. He kicks off from the recently launched Wikipedia fundraising drive that calls to give us money and we’ll give you “free” information.

The Fieryangel’s understanding of the word seems to oscillate between the notion of “free” as in “freedom” and “free” as in “beer.” The two give him the headache of filtering out which stage of “free” was used by Wikipedia in their fundraising ploy.

Wikipedia builds on the noble notion of “information wants to be free” and the paraphrased “an artist needs audience,” while going after a mere art-stealing profit-seeking pursuit, the author implies.

“If all of this is about ‘free’ as in ‘freedom,’” the Fieryangel wonders, “then wouldn’t it be better to support those artists, writers, musicians and others by attending concerts/buying artwork/buying books, instead of creating the circumstances which allow their work to be stolen in a misguided effort to help ‘poor children in Africa’?”

Picture: Flickr

Written by mockebird · Filed Under World, E-society, Business, Cybersecurity