I actually think, though, that particularly in the UK libraries fall too far on the other side whereby they attempt to appease the copyright industries before thinking about the consequences for the citizen that they are there to serve. I am thinking here about the British Library’s recent tie-up with Microsoft on an essentially proprietary platform to hold some of the Nation’s treasured archives. Here, if anywhere, was a place where the questions raised by free culture should have been more carefully thought through in terms of open access, lock-in and what the library of the 21st century could and should be.

Here I am thinking of your convincing argument that libraries have to move from a 20th Century idea of being mere book ‘managers’, to being proactive partners in utilising information archives. Giving Microsoft the contract in a sense positions the British Library as mere ‘content manager’ between the library visitor and data stored in Microsoft software. I suppose when a library starts talking about ‘content’ its not a great sign…

David

Claims to authority are made by reference to a priori human rights divorced from the political realm. Decisions are made between “right” and “wrong” (note the quite deliberate scare quotes) on the basis of a supposedly shared morality. There is then no ground for further discussion, as the terms of the decision have already been set a priori. This has dangerous consequences.

And I think this is still the primary problem with 95% of the free/libre culture debate. The references to public libraries then seem to try and tap into this moral register by arguing that if you don’t think all downloading and filesharing is ok, you must also think that public libraries are bad. I think this does a disservice to libraries and to the whole free/libre movement.

Anyway, I strongly disagree that free culture is limited to freedoms for the ‘consumer’, rather it is about the citizen. See The politics of the libre commons for a discussion of these issues in more detail.