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Deutsch: 'Free Culture' 2010 in Barcelona

Barcelona was the capital of free culture at the end of October 2010, with two events - Oxcars and then the Free Culture Forum (FCF) - organized by Exgae for awarding and promoting free culture concepts across Europe and beyond.

The third edition of the Oxcars ceremony took place on 28 October 2010, with 1000 people joining the event on the spot and many more watching it live on the Internet. The event awarded prizes for the Spanish free culture supporters (such as the academic José Luis Sampedro) and users (Txaber Allué - an e-cook blogger).

Following the ECJ ruling on private copying levies just a few days earlier, the stars of the event were the lawyer Jover Josep and Ana María Méndez - the owner of the computer store that started the proceedings against Spanish collective society SGAE. Javier characterized the current situation of the copyright levies by a powerful metaphor: "We are in a country where blind men pay for what they don't see and the deaf for what they can't hear."

British filmmaker Kate Madison was another star of the night, following her implication in the minimal budget fan-made film "Born of Hope", which recreated the world from the Tolkien trilogy. The film, available free on the Internet, had over 2 million views in less than one year.

The first round of discussions at FCF were related to the political and economic copyright framework. MEP Eva Lichtenberger made an appeal to civil society action in the debate saying that "We have lost the battle on the Gallo resolution, but this is just a resolution - so we will need to continue the battle on the future legislative framework and we need the civil society input." She also underlined that the discussion was more balanced now, a group of MEPs already exist that are not indoctrinated only by the lobby copyright approaches.

But the FCF focused this year on a very sensitive topic related to free culture: sustainability. The "flat rate" was the main topic of the discussions, with opinions pro and against a solution that might require users to pay a fixed monthly amount to be distributed to creators, as compensation for the free circulation of works on the Internet. The solution that might be adopted in Brazil has triggered a lot of attention and references from presenters or participants in the debate.

But other solutions for sustainability were publicly presented, from individual solutions, such as the crowd funded movie El Cosmonauta, to overall approaches, such as flattr presented by Peter Sunde or the Kick Starter, that had 500 projects funded and over 20 million USD pledged in the first 18 months of the project.

Alice Wiegand from Wikimedia Germany correctly underlined that it was not just financial sustainability that needed to be better researched, but also the technical and social sustainability, without which a project like Wikipedia can't last.

The debate on FCF was also broadcasted online and now videos of both events are publicly available on the Internet.

Six candles for six years to combat digital canon (only in Spanish, 29.10.2010)
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/10/29/barcelona/1288347187.html

The Free Culture Forum in Barcelona explores the way financial sustainability of free culture and shared (only in Spanish, 2.11.2010)
http://www.elcultural.es/noticias/ARTE/1011/Despues_del_Copyright

The free culture antiOscar reward José Luis Sampedro (only in Spanish, 29.10.2010)
http://www.laverdad.es/murcia/v/20101029/cultura/antioscar-cultura-lib...

Oxcars 2010 - video recordings
http://oxcars10.exgae.net/en/

Free Culture Forum 2010 - Pictures, videos and press
http://2010.fcforum.net/day-by-day/