Welcome to the Road to the Free Digital Society!

Our world is full of exciting opportunities delivered to us by the information technologies. We live in a digital age. As an example, our parents in 80s were shocked by live TV broadcasts from one continent to another. Today anybody can do the same (it's called live streaming) using his or her smartphone. It made citizen journalism possible. You can order the book or article in several clicks and it will be instantly delivered to your e-book reader, mobile phone and soon to the cars and refrigerators.

However, this digital ocean is full of dangers which most of us are not aware of. What are software licenses? What the term "works of authorship" means and which licenses can be applied to them? What is a proper balance between our security and privacy? Should understanding of human rights itself change because of the new technologies?

This course is focused on these questions. It is made with cooperation of Richard Matthew Stallman who is the founder of Free Software Foundation. He is the most famous expert in the field of digital freedom. Dr. Stallman is not only a theorist but also a practitioner. A living legend that has dedicated his life on liberating source code and making it available for all.

Welcome to our course! We are eager to share the knowledge with you! Make a step on the road to freedom!

Download Introduction video. Download subtitles.

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Keywords: GNU, GPL, Creative Commons, Copyleft, FSF, Freedom, Licensing, Sharing

Syllabus

Course requirements

No recommended background. Everybody is welcome!

Course handbook

Join us at Eliademy course pages!

You can download course handbook from our Downloads page.

Our friends from Eliademy, Finnish-based educational MOOC platform, agreed to put our course as "Featured" in their catalog. Eliademy Course iteration starts 04 May 2015 and ends 07 June 2015. Enrollment link.

All the course videos are published on this LibreJS-friendly web site. However, participation in this course on Eliademy MOOC platform gives you more learning benefits: