Design & People
Our 'Open Design Philosophy'
The 'Open Design Philosophy' was formally presented for the first time to a gathering of students and faculty of the Industrial Design Centre at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay on October 27, 2009 by Sethu Das, Co-founder of Design & People. Excerpts:

Background: The word "Open" has many definitions. One of the synonyms for the word 'Open' is "accessibility" — as to ideas and suggestions. The concept of Open Design we are trying propagate here is no different from that of an open ground, open field, open coast or an open session. An open session encourages and accommodates other views and perspectives on a subject, while a closed session is dominated and guided by a pre-written/pre-agreed agenda.

Philosophy: The current literary and artistic property rights result in the restriction of the public's access to works of art whereas the goal of the 'Open Design Philosophy' of Design & People is to encourage such access. This is designed to enable the public to use our artworks openly and creatively, therefore reinforcing the idea of the user/producer model of the Internet and other digital media. It recognises and reminds us with the fact that with the birth of the Internet, there are greater possibilities of collaboration, sharing and distributed production. The Open Design Philosophy of Design & People advocates an economy appropriate for art — based on sharing, exchange and joyful giving.

Design & People believes that it is only through our collective efforts, we can become a philosophical alternative to the materialism that dominates the design world today. And its only through our collaborative efforts, we can strengthen our line of resistance against the growing cultural and political globalisation.

Working Model:

Original Artwork --> Subsequent Artwork based on Original --> Communal Work

Our 'Open Design Philosophy' allows a user to copy, share, study, distribute, display, transform or even make derivative works out of Design & People artworks for any non-commercial/academic purpose by giving appropriate credit to the author/creator of the work. It also encourages the design experimentation process undertaken by designers.

We advise anyone who creates a subsequent artwork based on our original work make no attempt to remove it from the Public Domain. This is to ensure that we do not deny contribution or authorial rights to anyone but to ensure that in choosing to contribute to the evolution of this work of art, the user agrees to give to others the very same rights.

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"Q: What inspired you to start a socially-conscious design movement?
Design & People: Our own sufferings. In fact we wanted to overcome some of our long-term fears while trying to help others through the activities of Design & People."
(While speaking to 'Items')

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"Q: Could you mention some of your successful projects?
Design & People: There is no success of failure once you are in the field. Success was never our ultimate goal, though survival is."
(While speaking to 'Architects & Interiors India')

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"Q: Why do you want designers to get involved with social and political issues?
Design & People: We believe that issues around us are much more important than design itself. It is all about issues we are surrounded with and our collective methods and initiatives to resolve them, rather than individual, creative expressions."
(While speaking to 'Outlook')

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"Q: Was it difficult to rope in likeminded designers to give their time to such a project?
Design & People: Yes, it was. Initially no one really understood what we actually meant by Free Design (Free as in 'Free Gifts', Free as in 'Freedom' and Free as in 'Free Tibet')"
(While speaking to 'Architects & Interiors India')

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"Q: What are you trying to achieve?
Design & People: We try to turn designers into activists, get them out of their cabins, take design to the people on the road and change the way others perceive design."
(While speaking to 'Outlook')

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"Q: Do you have a hidden agenda?
Design & People: Yes. One of our 'hidden' agendas is to promote the culture of helping each other. Most organisations are comfortable seeking our free service but not doing the same for others. Their inability to work for others without expecting anything in return also amounts to our failure."
(While speaking to 'Architects & Interiors India')

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By Lawrence Liang
Origin of Copyright Laws
In a broad historical and cultural view, copyright is a recent and by no means universal concept. Copyrights laws originated in Western society in the 18th century. During the Renaissance, printers throughout Europe would reprint popular books without obtaining permissions or paying royalties and copyright was created as a way to regulate the printing industry. With the emergence of the concept of artistic genius, copyright became enmeshed with the general cultural understanding of authorship. Before the normal institutionalisation of ideas of authorship and creativity, copying was even seen to be a noble act. Confucius for instance is reported to have stated after completing a book: "I have finally finished my greatest work and I am proud to say that not a single idea in it is mine".

Later, with globalised capitalism, control over copyrighted works became centered in the hands of the media corporations instead of authors and artists. Even as the internet and digital media rendered distinctions between original and copies largely obsolete, changes in the law tried to artificially maintain them. As a result, copyright laws over time have been transformed from their original purpose of regulating the publishing industry to instead regulating its customers, artists and audiences.

Traditionally, copyright was of little relevance to cultural and artistic practice except in the realm of commercial print publishing.

(Lawrence Liang is the author of 'Guide to Open Content Licenses' published by Piet Zwart Institute with support from Creative Commons. He works with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore as a Legal Researcher).

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G L O S S A R Y

Author/Creator
The author of a work is the person, company or other entity which is deemed to have produced it. The author of a book is the person who wrote it. The author of a website might be one or several people.

Copyleft
Copyleft is phrase first used by artist Ray Johnson to describe the way he mixed images together from various media sources and then made them available by ephemeral means such as mail art or as gifts. The phrase has since been used by Free Software developers to name their variant use of copyright law.

Copyright
A set of laws, originally designed to protect publishing monopolies, which give those who purchase or otherwise obtain a license from authors to have rights over their work's publication.

Derivative Work
A derivative work is something that uses as an element in its composition a part or even the whole of another work. Sample-based music is often derivative for instance. The theory of derivation requires that there be a fixed and unmoving point of origination. A theory of culture which sees it as a matter of flows, change and emergent collaboration would claim that all work is derivative.

Open Content
Here this is used as a generic term. Content is any material, data, files, images, texts, which are not part of software or other digital systems but which are handled by them. "Open" content is any such content which is made available by means of one of the kinds of licenses described in this booklet. One of the licenses described here, "Open Content" which has now been subsumed by the Creative Commons project also used this term.

Public Domain
Something in the public domain is available for anyone to use regardless of copyright.