Copyleft art

Copyleft art is art that uses the notion of copyleft to make creative collaboration and distribution unrestricted for artistic works rather than experience the traditional hampering cooperation between artists. Movements include the Libre Society, emerging open-source record labels, and the Free Art license.

Copyleft licenses for materials other than software include the Creative Commons ShareAlike licenses and the GNU Free Documentation License (abbreviated to GNU FDL, GFDL, or FDL). Against DRM license is a free copyleft license for artworks published by Free Creations. The GFDL can be used to apply copyleft to works that have no distinguishable source code (while the GPL's requirement to release source code is meaningless when source code is not distinguishable from compiled code or object code or executable code or binary code in a work). The GFDL does distinguish between a "transparent copy" and an "opaque copy", using a different definition than the GPL's "source code" vs. "object code".

In art, copyleft has to hinge on broader notions regarding authors' rights, which are even more complex (and more differing between countries) than mere copyright law (see e.g., moral rights, droit d'auteur, intellectual rights and Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works).

Many artists copyleft their work on terms requiring that those who copy it and then edit it in some way must credit the initial artist. There are problems with this, however: the artist's work may be used in a way that is against his or her will. If the artist is credited, he or she might then seem to be associated with an undesirable group or ideology.

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