[p2p-research] International Forum on Free Culture & Knowledge - Barcelona 29 Oct to 1 Nov 2009

[Michel Bauwens]

From: "Mayo FM"


International Forum on Free Culture &
Knowledge - Barcelona 29 Oct to 1 Nov 2009


Call for participation: INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON FREE CULTURE & KNOWLEDGE
Barcelona, October 29 to November 1st 2009

Website: http://www.fcforum.net/

Newsletter subscription:
http://openfsm.net/projects/freecultureforum/lists/freecultureforumbcn

There is in motion the celebration of an International Forum on free culture
and knowledge from October 29 to November 1st 2009 at Barcelona.

This is the opportunity to join under the same roof and from a critical
perspective, the main organizations and active voices in the free culture
and knowledge world; a meeting point to sit down, dance and work together
setting common agendas, strategies and address disagreements. In this
regard, the Forum is action-oriented. Besides that, there are the conditions
to get the visibility to reach a wider public and point out another
perspective about knowledge, culture and creativity, different to the one
that the entertainment industry and universities insists in showing us.


Why Barcelona

In January 2010, Spanish State will take up the European Presidency of the
European Union. Spanish Government has already announced that one of their
flagships will be reinforcing the control of the Internet and criminalizing
the sharing culture in the digital environment. The consequences of those
decisions will be noticed in the rest of the world. Furthermore, within this
context, Barcelona is closing agreements with cultural institutions to set
new agreements to get a fairer sharing of copyrights. These agreements will
be spread to other institutions in Catalonia and Spanish State.

In October 29th this year Barcelona will hold the Second Edition of the
Oxcars Festival, an international event to honor the defense of culture and
to show that other creation channels, as good and with as much quality as
traditional ones, exist. The last edition was a success with more than 2000
participants. It brought the attention both of an interested public and of
media. You can find more information about last year show at
http://exgae.net/exgae-multiply-and-share-forth/theoxcars .

In the Spanish State, there are very active organizations, movements and
persons related to free culture from different perspectives, offering a very
rich sharing space and a source of new proposals from where to launch an
international process. In this regard, from several worldwide voices, like
during the last World Social Forum (Belem do Para Brazil 2009) is recognized
the necessity to create international spaces for networking, coordination
and building of a global frame of the free culture and knowledge issue,
analyse similarities and develop common agendas; the Free Culture Forum of
Barcelona aims to create such space.

What: Combine advocacy and building of infrastructure

The forum? main objectives are on the one hand building networks to optimize
the efforts of the different groups and fixing common demands against
content?s industry and government proposals? in its eagerness to control
culture and information and to self-organize to build infrastructure to
sustain free culture; and on the other hand reinforcing the
self-organization of tools and infrastructure to support free culture.

How

The schedule and methodology of the Forum is organized in 3 days

* October 29th: Celebration of the Oxcars Free Culture Awards Festival.
* October 30th: Panels presentation of key experiences from around the globe
and discussion on the key issues.
* October 31th: Working groups around the key issues of the Forum and open
space to meetings from participants initiatives.
* November 1st: Finish placing in common the results and initiatives from
the meetings and working groups in order to identify a common future agenda
and manifesto.

Key issues

LEGAL PERSPECTIVES AND USERS ACCESS: From a legal point of view, we will try
to identify holes and flexibilities in national regulations and
International agreements to look for a strategy against the abuses of
knowledge and culture policies both in private and contractual relations and
against the international public policies.It is necessary to consider users
rights before culture. Last years tendency has broken the balance between
user and consumer rights and producer and creators which must be
reestablished.

EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: Opposed to the corporative approach to
education, there is a new approach based on the idea of sharing and keeping
up solidarity. New ways of managing knowledge created by public funded
research and innovative research methodologies taking into account social
movements as knowledge generators. It is also about taking advantage of the
new educational tools and the dissemination of knowledge that Internet and
digital culture have provided. Little by little, new initiatives for use and
creation of materials without copyrights and proposals to extend limitations
and exceptions to those rights with educational aims are emerging.

ECONOMIES, NEW P2P MODELS AND SUSTAINABLE DISTRIBUTION: Also for Economy,
culture and knowledge management are basic. In the last few years, more and
more voices are questioning the costs for society and its development of
cultural and knowledge exploitation models that are based on exclusive
rights with too long life span. Favored by the Internet, focus of economy
has moved from property to access. Free Culture philosophy, inherited from
free software is the empirical proof that a new ethic and new businesses
based on knowledge democratization are possible. Intermediaries disappear
and author becomes producer of her works.

FREE SOFTWARE AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING HACKER PHILOSOPHY: Even when the term
hackers is usually used by media with negative connotation, around this
movement alternative actions have been developed with a clear philosophy of
defense of user?s rights from a perspective of a common conscience which
promotes freedom of knowledge and social justice. Hackers movement have also
build key platforms and tools for a free culture infrastructure.

ORGANIZATIONAL LOGIC AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF FREE CULTURE: Critically
reflect on the emerging collective action organizational and democratic
features related to free culture experiences (such as the remix culture,
prosumerirsm, descentralised organizing and open and participative
principles), looking to strains and weaknesses, and to discuss on their
political implications and the emerging institutional logic. Furthermore, a
critical analysis on the ?dark? side of technology and the risk linked to
its uses, such as increase of surveillance, control and concentration of
benefits over collectively generated value.

The Forum infrastructure is provided by Exgae, Networked Politics, Free
knowledge Institute and the collaboration of Students For Free Culture and
Hangar.


Website: http://fcforum.net/
Newsletter of informations:
http://openfsm.net/projects/freecultureforum/lists/freecultureforumbcn
Organization contact: info at fcforum.net

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090815/5ed3797c/attachment-0001.html>