"If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution; Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs."

Richard Stallman, 1985
from The GNU Manifesto.

The mission of Folkstreams.net is to build a national preserve of documentary films about American folk or roots culture. Produced by independent filmmakers, these hard-to-find films give voice to the arts and experience of diverse American groups. Folkstreams.net makes these films easy to find and to see by video-streaming them on the Internet, and also provides in-depth and reliable contextual materials about the subjects and the filmmaking.

Documenting the American South (DAS) is a collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from
the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. The Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors DAS, and as of November 2003, DAS includes 1,253 books and manuscripts.  Two current DAS projects are The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940, and North
Carolinians and the Great War.

The members of the Etree.org community are united by a belief among its members that music that bands permit to be traded should be freely traded. The biggest difference between Etree.org and other online music sites is that Etree.org deals exclusively with legally tradeable music. They only deal with live recordings by artists that allow taping and/or free trading of their performances. The list of TradeFriendly bands grows daily. Trading music by artists who don't permit it could shut etree.org down faster than you can say Napster. For that reason, and more importantly out of respect to those who create the music, they prohibit people from using this community to exchange music unless the artist gives permission to do so. The community was formed as an offshoot of two highly regarded online trading communities: [Sugarmegs Audio] and [People for a Clearer Phish]. Starting with 10 people, etree.org has enjoyed ever-increasing growth and popularity. As of early 2004, there were over 12,000 users and almost 300 independently-operated file (FTP) servers.

Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest (and still the best) producer of free electronic books (often called eBooks). Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision. Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg houses over 6000 complete electronic versions important literature and scientific texts. Project Gutenberg features materials in over 20 languages and in dozens of formats, and has a goal of making one million free eBooks available online by early in the next decade. From 1991 to today, Project Gutenberg had managed to double its production of free eBooks every 18 months.

Remember when the web was lynx, mosaic, gopher and veronica? When there was no spam, and newsgroups were useful, and blogs weren't even a glimmer in the eye of their inventor? Henriette's Herbal Homepage was there and flourishing, back in the internet stoneage. Widely regarded as the definitive web resource for all things herbal, it's non-commercial, chock-full of information, searchable and cross-indexed, with herbal FAQs, herbal archives, old herbal texts, and thousands of photos. It's one of the best places to go on the Web if you're interested in herbs and their uses.

A collection of works from the great masters of Western Art, put together into a virtual art museum. We're not
allowed to call it The Louvre anymore, but it's still got paintings from that big museum and other French stuff.  Started by Nicholas Pioch, the Webmuseum was created because he felt more art materials was needed on the Internet. The contributor run web art gallery has been around for almost 10 years, and is home to some of the webs most creative art.