Permission and Consent

Did a free culture undermine Free Culture?

Lessig, 2006 (Nobuyuki Hayashi, CC BY NC SA)

Perhaps one of the coinages of Free Culture that rings most cringeworthy in 2022 is “permissionless culture”.

On the backdrop of the discourse around issues of cultural appropriation and movements like #MeToo, a “permissionless” culture reads now to me as gesturing towards something less positive, more siniste…