Free Culture Panel Discussion Thursday: Because Free Stuff is Always Good

One of the problems with being as terribly derivative as Bostonist sometimes tends to be is that it's hard to find photos. It's easy to re-hash a Globe story and add some snarky commentary, but using the Globe's actual pictures that they paid actual photographers to take is, well, frowned upon. Because of this, we're very interested in the Free Culture movement, which seeks to challenge existing rules about the ownership of artistic creations. Most of the Free Culture movement isn't as crass and self-serving as we are, and we imagine its better elements will be on display on Thursday, when Northeastern hosts a panel discussion on the movement.

Named after a book by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (who will be at the event on Thursday), the Free Culture movement has roots in the free software movement and among artsy types, and focuses on making intellectual property of all sorts less, well, proprietary. The idea is to spur innovation by making it easier for people to take what others have done and modify or improve it.

Lessig created Creative Commons, which provides flexible copyright licenses that allow creators to let other people use their work for some things but not others (e.g., restricting commercial use only). He will be joined on the panel by Derek Slater, of the ever-first-amendment-friendly and generally wonderful Electronic Frontier Foundation, Nelson Pavlovsky, the undergrad at Swarthmore who founded FreeCulture.org, and William Wakeling, and Associate Dean at Northeastern.

The event takes place on Thursday from 11:30 to 2:30 in NU's Dodge Hall. Naturally, admission is free and open to the public.

Photo: Among other things, Creative Commons licensing gives Bostonist access to the fine photos of Ernesto Perales Soto.