COM 220, 221 - Free Culture

1 course unit

This course explores current debates surrounding free culture, specifically, 1) the history and development of notions of copyright in the nineteenth century and “intellectual property” in the twentieth century, 2) processes of media convergence and digitalization in today’s media, 3) the development of the free, open source software (FOSS) movement in the late 1970s and the challenge to proprietary software found in the Linux operation system, 4) digital distribution of music, the Napster debate, and remix culture in the music industry, 5) Wikimedia and the new power of “crowdsourcing” in knowledge labor, 6) Net neutrality, and 7) the philosophy and development of the digital commons, enshrined in the Creative Commons license and the legal implications of such licenses for artists, musicians, audiences, and citizens. Students will use an open source computer OS (Linux) and free software tools to contribute to a class digital project on a topic related to the free culture movement.
Meets general academic requirement SL (and W when offered as 221).