Hey everyone, I had a bit of an interesting idea recently. We should have our own Libre Culture Lemmy Book and/or Film Club! The rules are quite simple.
Any content we choose to discuss must be either in the public domain or must have a license that’s approved for free cultural works.
Every three months, we vote on a new film or novel to read, or a collection of short stories that are about the length of a novel combined. Other media could be allowed as well. Downvoting suggestions isn’t allowed, unless the suggested content is inappropriate.
I can’t wait to see how this’ll go! Please let me know what you guys think of this idea, and let’s begin voting in this comment section what we’d like to watch/read in March!
I haven’t previously seen this anywhere, so I’m not quite sure what type of books to suggest. But here’s mine suggestion [book] anyway: Cipherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
edit: apparently this book is not in public domain, so it cannot be approved for this, however it’s an interesting read nonetheless, here is an Internet Archive link if anyone’s interested
Interesting suggestion knowing how badly Assange’s image has aged. I remember back in college I was a huge fan of his ideas but the recent undeniable paper trails connecting wikileaks to Russian and other government propaganda kinda ruins the idea behind the book - sure it was 2012 but it’ll be a tough read nevertheless.
It could be interesting as a bit of a retrospective. A look into the past, knowing the context of the present.
Haha to be frank, I’ve never seen this anywhere either. The idea just sort of formed one day. I posted the full story here.
If you’re having trouble thinking which genres are appropriate, don’t worry about it. All genres are welcome, all that matters is the copyright license.
I also had a bit of trouble finding which license Cipherpunks is under. I looked towards The Internet Archive, and while there seemed to be a full copy of the book on there, the book states at the beginning that all rights are reserved, so while I consider the book to be relevant to the ideas of free culture, It’s not licensed under a free culture license.
yep, I didn’t notice this, but still it’s an interesting book to read…
Haha I might give it a read sometime.
I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention the two biggest archives of free and/or public domain literature:
I haven’t heard of librivox before! Thanks for mentioning it! Project Gutenberg was the site that gave me the idea of reading A Christmas Story. I definitely want to read it some day.
Book #2 suggestion: Blindsight.
This one I have only read the prologue.
Edit: Adding the wikipedia article to describe the book.
I think the length of this book appeals to me much more. It also helps me make a decision that there’s so much description for what the plot is about.
I’d propose starting off with Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity as it’s often quoted to be cornerstone reading for libre culture yet I know many people hadn’t had the chance to attend to it (including myself)
Lawrence Lessig, “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.
Or for fiction I’d go with Blindsight by Peter Watts that is one of most popular creative commons sci-fi works of the century:
It’s been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn’t want to meet? Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, and a biologist so spliced to machinery he can’t feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior, and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find - but you’d give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them.
Blindsight definitely appeals to me, but I really like the idea of doing Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. I haven’t read it myself either, it’d be an excellent start to this thing that we’re starting!
Can I upvote more than once for Blindsight? It was the first book I thought of.
Sounds like a great idea! I’d love to participate though 3 months sounds like quite a bit.
What frequency would you prefer?
I think it depends on content type. A movie maybe biweekly? For a book something longer would be nice: maybe 3 months in that case. This could be adjusted as we go for sure. I’d also like to propose to focus on newer content as classic public domain has been explored quite a bit and focusing on newer content could help us to carve ourselves a niche and kinda prioritize Libre culture idea.
Your proposal sounds good to me! Though a bi weekly movie sounds a bit too frequent for me, but then again it could just be me. Maybe a movie once a month?
Could do discussion on a couple chapters and have more frequent meeting for books too.
This thread turning out to be quite interesting: I propose open up some sort of megathread where we could collect Libre work recommendations! Im not sure how well lemmy supports this idea but in general the resources on Libre content on the internet are really scarce - this would be a good start.
I definitely agree that this thread is really becoming something. I know I can sticky threads to the top of the community page. Do you propose I start a new thread exclusively for March(book) and February(movie) recommendations and voting that I sticky to the top?
Also, it could be a place where we share general work recommendations too, if you think it’d be appropriate? I know there are some pretty great CC music albums that don’t get a lot of love! What should the tread be called, if we start it?
My [book] suggestion: Warbreaker.
I am already reading it though. On chapter 15 out of 58. It’s quite long.
I’ve heard of this one before, though I don’t know much about it. If everyone’s okay with a longer book, we could start with this one. It’s technically not approved for free cultural works but honestly, I think we can adjust the rule to include all the CC licenses haha.
I’d like to check out the original A Christmas Charol, as a light suggestion, if we can’t come up with any better ideas.
Love this idea!
Haha thank you! The whole thing started three days ago when I found a crate of school supplies and books behind the dumpsters outside my work. I took two books out of the pile, they were the only things that were remotely valuable, and I took them home with me. It looks like some kids were trying to burn them. I decided to deliver them to the nearest Little Free Library, and at that time I was chatting on Mastodon with Emacsen, who wrote some excellent blog posts on OpenStreetMap that I loved. It gave me the idea of mapping out all the LFL’s in my city by telling locals about OSM and asking them if they know where any are so I can add them.
Then two days ago, I was sitting on my bed looking at the two books. They’re both called “Readers Digest Condensed Books”, which gave me the idea about assembling a bunch of CC and public domain works into a series of digests that can be read on your way to work and such, but then after looking into it, it became obvious that for a three month period, just one average sized novel would do.
I had the idea of a once a year CC movie night already, but it was on the backburner and I doubted it’d be popular. I ended up combining the ideas together and that’s how I came up with this idea.
Wow, this is awesome! Thanks for posting this!
