The Free Culture Forum (FCForum) was an international meeting of relevant organisations and individuals involved in free culture, digital rights and access to knowledge. It took place in Barcelona every annually from 2009 to 2015, jointly with the oXcars, a free culture festival. The oXcars (or OXcars) are a non-competitive awards ceremony held at Sala Apolo in Barcelona, Spain, in October each year. They are a public showcase that puts the spotlight on cultural creation and distribution carried out under the paradigms of shared culture.[1] Through presentations and symbolic mentions of works in a series of categories, real legal situations involving free culture are shown using parody.
The Oxcars are an awards ceremony organised by Xnet (previously eXgae, until November 2010),[2] a non-profit organisation that explores alternative models for cultural diffusion and royalties management. In 2008 and 2009 the oXcars were organised with the collaboration of Conservas, and in 2010 with Conservas, Red Sostenible and Telenoika.[3]
The awards ceremony is an overview of outstanding projects in the field of free/libre culture and knowledge, with live music, videos, brief presentations, performances and readings. Since 2009, the ceremonies have coincided with the FCForum, an international conference in which organisations and experts in free/libre culture and knowledge gather to devise a global strategic framework and an international framework for coordination.
The participants of the first Oxcars, on October 28, 2008, were Leo Bassi, The Pirate Bay, literary collective Wu Ming, filmmaker Guillermo Zapata (director of the short film Lo que tú quieras oír), Pablo Soto (developer of the Manolito P2P software), Platoniq, Alan Toner, FreeCinema, Griffi from Sólo los Solo, Molleindustria (with the video game Free Culture Game), Enrique Sierra from 127.es, the Blender Foundation with the 3D short film Big Buck Bunny, Realidades Avanzadas and Matt Black (Coldcut).[5] The evening was rounded off with live sets by K-Sero+Off://TV[permanent dead link], Filastine and La Màquina de Turing.[6][7][8][9]
Related activities
A series of activities related to free/libre culture were organised on October 29 and November 1, in conjunction with the 2008 oXcars. They included talks, debates, round table discussions and practical workshops on licences, examples of free culture, anonymity and cryptography on the net, production and royalties management for audiovisual projects, and Safe Creative, a service that allows users to register works with any type of licence at no cost. Activities also included the launch of the book New Thing by Wu Ming and a screening of the film Steal this film, part 2.[10]
FCForum 2009
The main objectives of the Free Culture Forum 2009 (from October 30 to November 1) were, on the one hand, building networks to optimise the efforts of the different groups and setting common demands against the proposals from industry and governments in their eagerness to control culture and information; and on the other hand reinforcing the self-organisation of tools and infrastructures to support free culture.[11] The Free Knowledge Institute. The FCForum 2009 produced the Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge.[12]
Official observers from the European Community's Commission for Culture and Education, the European Community's Commission for Consumer Protection Government of Brazil ( were present.
Charter for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge
The Charter has been disseminated and implemented worldwide, including the 26th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin[13] and the Free Culture X Conference][14]
2009 Oxcars
The participants of the 2nd Oxcars were Duquende, the playwright Rodrigo García, the creators of the Internet series Malviviendo, Derivart, the Taller de Musics Original Jazz Orquesta, the writer Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Riot Cinema Collective, Jamendo, Illegal Art, FreeCinema, the publishers Alqua, the artist Evan Roth, the comedian Rémi Gaillard, psst!3 (collaborative film project), Shelios, short film maker David O'Reilly, Compartir Dòna Gustet, Xavier Theros and Martín Fernández (MotionGraphics). The evening ended with a concert and live DJ set by Daedelus and Martin Vallejo.[15]
FCForum 2010
The second FCForum[16] was held in Barcelona from October 28 to 31, 2010 and focused on economical models. It resulted in a Declaration and How to Manual on sustainability of creativity in the digital era[17] The FCForum declaration was signed by 80 organisations and individuals, including Richard Stallman.
Sustainable models for creativity in the digital age
In February 2011, two documents drafted by FCForum participants were released: Sustainable Models for Creativity[18] and the How-To Manual for Sustainable creativity[19] addressed at political reformers, citizens and free culture activists. Both documents are based on an understanding that current royalties management and cultural distribution systems have become obsolete in the digital age, and the conviction that free software and peer production and distribution is not incompatible with commercial distribution. The How-To Manual sets out a series of alternative commercial and non-profit models. It insists that the Internet must remain free and open in order to allow online collaboration models to develop, and it must be recognised as a tool that promotes contact between creators and the public. It offers an overview of new models that are already operating in a variety of fields, such as freemium, crowdfunding and micropayment systems in which users make small financial contributions to projects that are looking for seed funding through platforms such as Kickstarter and lanzanos.com or to existing initiatives that are given money depending on the number of users who vote for them. It also claims that the creators of commercial cooperative platforms should share their profits with the creators of the content they publish.
2010 Oxcars
The participants of the 3rd Oxcars in 2010 were the writer José Luis Sampedro, The Pinker Tones, Kate Madison and Actors at Work Productions (creators of the film Born of Hope), dance company Akram Khan, the writer Belén Gopegui, Miguel Brieva, Triolocría, design studio Lava with their Free Magenta campaign (against the Deutsche Telekom patent on the colour magenta), gastronomic blogger Txaber Allué, hip-hop crew At Versaris, the Reactable (collaborative electronic music instrument), the free culture and copyleft festival Te Pica la Barba (with the animated short film Sopa, by Irene Iborra and Jossie Malis), Rojadirecta (a portal that offers sports broadcast through streaming or P2P applications), Koulomek, the Tweetpeli (a collaborative film made through Twitter), leerestademoda.com, Ploomba (a free piped music service), Jerzy Celichowski (from Blinken Open Society Archives), European Digital Rights, Public Domain Day, La Máquina que guía los rayos del sol (animations), Martín Hernández (MotionGraphics) and Kevin Nicoll (illustration).[20][21][22]
FCForum 2011
The third annual FCForum was held in Barcelona on October 28, 29 and 30, under the title ‘Networks for a R-evolution’.
It included a round table on the current situation of film and the Internet in Spain, with Álex de la Iglesia, Juan Carlos Tous, Amparo Peiró, Eudald Doménech and the lawyer Josep Jover. This was followed by a session in which Yproducciones, Kayros Transmedia, Daniel Granados, Kolector, Flattr, Goteo and Verkami explored some new sustainable alternatives for the creative sector.[23]
The participants featured in the 4th Oxcars included John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), who celebrated 15 years of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace; digital newspaper El Mundo Today, which gives a satirical account of political and social current affairs; Stéphane Grueso, director of Copiad Malditos, the first Creative Commons documentary co-produced by TVE; cartoonist Aleix Saló; and the group Las buenas noches, which releases its music under Creative Commons.
FCForum 2012
The fourth FCForum was held at Ars Santa Mònica on October 26 and 27.
It explored the theme of sustainable models for the creative sector, with practical examples from the fields of journalism, education (Freeangle) and publishing (Bookcamping). The report on crowdfunding "Crowdfunding Experiences in Spain and Catalonia: Key Characteristics, Challenges and Obstacles. Inspiration and Recommendations for a Stronger Tool for Collective, Public and Private Cross-Financing” was presented. One of the main sections looked at how cyber crime is being used as an excuse to criminalize and control the Internet,.
It also covered democracy in the digital age, with debates on transparency in public institutions (Cuentas Claras, Discursia, Sueldos Públicos, Graba to Pleno, Qué hacen los diputados, Open Knowledge Foundation, Access Info, Tu Derecho a Saber and Civio), journalism and freedom of information, and networked democracy.
The 2012 FCForum also worked on a system for the collaborative reform of Intellectual Property legislation in Spain and the European Union, using documents linked to the FCForum and the proposal prepared by Quadrature du Net as a point of departure. It also participated in the book Cultura libre digital - Nociones básicas para defender lo que es de todxs, which was published by Editorial Icaria in 2012.
2012 Oxcars
The 5th Oxcars were held in Barcelona on 25 October 2012, and focused on identifying the defenders and detractors of the free circulation of culture and the new models of cultural creation. The show began with an adaptation of a speech by Cory Doctorow, "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation". Participants included the actor Paco León, with his film Carmina o revienta, premiered simultaneously in theatres and on the Internet; the rapper Dan Bull; the documentary No.Res, released under Creative Commons; the citizen legal action 15M pa Rato; the web portal Taringa! and the initiative Megabox by Megaupload.
FCForum 2013
The FCForum 2013 took place on October 25 and revolved around four core themes: Creativity, Culture and Knowledge: New models of access and production; Data Science: The potential and limits of Big Data; Networked Democracy; and Electronic Money and Distributed Currency: Strengths and weaknesses.
2013 Oxcars
The sixth Oxcars were held in Barcelona on 24 October 2013. Participants included the lawyer David Bravo, a specialist in intellectual property and computer law, Toque a Bankia, My Open Source Cure, Paul Borons, Robocicla, Scann, and the electronic music group Kashba.[24]
FCForum 2014
The sixth edition of the FCForum was itinerant; it took place in different spaces and dates.
The Barcelona Growth Center hosted on November 4 an all-day meeting on Networked Democracy and Technopolitics where eight participants with experience in these fields explained both dimensions and the practices in technopolitics and democracy. On November 5, 6 and 7, at the BAU Design College of Barcelona, several workshops on design tools took place as well as lectures divided in five blocks:
Free design practices
Prosthetics and pots
Open hardware and design
Critical perspectives in art and design
Design of open spaces
The participants in this edition were designers, artists, associations and cultural collectives.
On November 27, 28 and 29, at the Barcelona's Center of Contemporary Culture, The Influencers took place; a festival about non conventional art, communication guerrilla and radical entertainment.
FCForum 2015
Under the title Fighters & Makers, the seventh edition of the FCForum took place on October 30 and 31 and November 2, 2015, in different spaces in Barcelona.[25]
On October 30,[26] Sala Conservas held a series of working groups on - Legislation on copyright and intellectual property. Net Neutrality.[27]- Freedom of expression, and freedom of information
On October 31, the FCForum moved to the Farinera del Clot cultural centre, opening with a press conference for journalists and attendees to introduce the "Citizen Group against Corruption";
Artistic freedom can be defined as "the freedom to imagine, create and distribute diverse cultural expressions free of governmental censorship, political interference or the pressures of non-state actors." Generally, artistic freedom describes the extent of independence artists obtain to create art freely. Moreover, artistic freedom concerns "the rights of citizens to access artistic expressions and take part in cultural life—and thus [represents] one of the key issues for democracy." The extent of freedom indispensable to create art freely differs regarding the existence or nonexistence of national instruments established to protect, to promote, to control or to censor artists and their creative expressions. This is why universal, regional and national legal provisions have been installed to guarantee the right to freedom of expression in general and of artistic expression in particular. In 2013, Ms Farida Shaheed, United Nations special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, presented her "Report in the field of cultural rights: The right to freedom of expression and creativity" providing a comprehensive study of the status quo of, and specifically the limitations and challenges to, artistic freedom worldwide. In this study, artistic freedom "was put forward as a basic human right that went beyond the 'right to create' or the 'right to participate in cultural life'." It stresses the range of fundamental freedoms indispensable for artistic expression and creativity, e.g. the freedoms of movement and association. "The State of Artistic Freedom" is an integral report published by arts censorship monitor Freemuse on an annual basis.
Michel Bauwens is a Belgian theorist in the emerging field of peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration, writer, and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation. Bauwens founded the P2P Foundation, a global organization of researchers working in open collaboration in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has authored a number of essays, including his thesis The Political Economy of Peer Production.
Social peer-to-peer processes are interactions among humans with a peer-to-peer dynamic. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a term that originated from the popular concept of the P2P distributed computer application architecture which partitions tasks or workloads between peers. This application structure was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster, the first of its kind in the late 1990s.
The 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures - was a 141-day international event that took place in the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona (CCIB) and its surrounding venues, Barcelona, Spain from May 9 to September 26, 2004, and was the first edition of the Universal Forum of Cultures. The open space used by the event is now a public park called the Parc del Fòrum.
Jorge Cortell is an activist and commentator known for his opposition to the concept of Intellectual Property. He was forced to resign as visiting professor of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) after delivering a talk in the university where he defended copyleft and P2P networks, and criticized copyright and patents, defying pressure from the dean and the MPAA who tried to censor his talk.
Néstor García Canclini is an Argentinian academic and anthropologist known for his theorization of the concept of "hybridity."
OurProject.org (OP) is a web-based collaborative free content repository. It acts as a central location for the construction and maintenance of social/cultural/artistic projects, providing web space and tools, and focusing in free knowledge. It claims to extend the ideas and methodology of free software to social areas and free culture in general. Since September 2009, Ourproject is under the Comunes Association umbrella, and gave birth to the Kune collaborative social network for groups.
The Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Centre (Spanish: Centro Cultural Internacional Oscar Niemeyer, is a cultural centre located in the city of Avilés, in Spain. It takes its name from its architect and designer, Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer.
Ángeles González-Sinde Reig is a Spanish scriptwriter, film director and politician. She served as Minister of Culture of the Government of Spain from April 2009 until December 2011. Her appointment was received with anger and rejection by the Spanish Internet Community, due to González-Sinde's opposition to P2P file sharing and the alleged conflict of interest due to her ties to the film industry. A strict anti-piracy law enacted in Spain in December 2011 has become known colloquially as Ley Sinde, or the Sinde Law, as she was seen as the primary backer of the measure.
The Free Knowledge Institute (FKI) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2006 in the Netherlands. Inspired by the free software movement, the FKI fosters the free exchange of knowledge in all areas of society by promoting freedom of use, modification, copying, and distribution of knowledge about education, technology, culture, and science.
Wouter Tebbens, is a Dutch activist, researcher and social entrepreneur on Free Knowledge.
Copyright for Creativity - A Declaration for Europe issued on 5 May 2010, is intended as a statement of how copyright policy could be constructed in the Internet Age. It comes against the background of political debate within Europe to rethink copyright in an era where the use of digital content without paying fees to the creators is part of the business model for some of the largest global internet platforms. Interests of content creators and online platform providers collide. The declaration has been written by a group from political party "European People's Party (EPP)" The Declaration focuses on both the exclusive rights and the limitations and exceptions to existing copyright rulings and standards.
Simona Levi is a theatre director, playwright, activist, technopolitical strategist, cultural manager and curator, and lecturer. Born in Italy and with Spanish nationality, she has been living in Barcelona, Spain, since 1990. She is an activist in the field of freedom of expression and information, digital rights, the free flow of culture and knowledge, strategic use of digital tools for collective action, institutional accountability, protection of whistleblowers and the fight against corruption and disinformation. She has also participated in movements in defence of the right to housing and use of public space.
Xnet is a non-profit activist platform that develops and promotes alternative models for cultural dissemination and royalty management and work in different fields related to digital rights, networked democracy and freedom of expression. Its activities revolve around five core themes: free culture, Internet neutrality, technopolitics, network democracy, new models of sustainability for the digital era and the defence of citizen journalism and the legal fight against corruption. Xnet also engages in political lobbying at the national and international levels, by preparing and submitting legislative proposals and viral campaigns. Until 2023, Xnet was a member of European Digital Rights (EDRi), a not-for-profit association to promote, protect and uphold civil rights in the field of information and communication technology.
The digital commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology. Resources are typically designed to be used by the community by which they are created.
Glòria Pérez-Salmerón is the Stichting IFLA Global Libraries Chair from August 30, 2019 and was Director of the National Library of Spain (BNE). She was President of the Spanish Federation of Societies of Archivists, Librarians, Documentalists and Museology (FESABID) from 2014 to 2018 and from 2017 to 2019 President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).
Mayo Fuster Morell is a social researcher. Her research has focused on sharing economy, social movements, online communities and digital Commons, frequently using participatory action research and method triangulation. She has been part of the most important research centres studying Internet and its social effects, including the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the MIT Center for Civic Media or the Berkeley School of Information. As an active citizen, she is the co-founder of multiple initiatives around digital Commons and Free Culture, such as the Procomuns Forum on collaborative economy.
The Operation Anubis was a police operation in Catalonia, Spain, initiated on 20 September 2017 by the Civil Guard following orders of the trial court number 13 of Barcelona, directed by judge Juan Antonio Ramírez Sunyer. Its aim was to dismantle the framework of the Catalan independence referendum of 1 October 2017, that was suspended on 6 September 2017 by the Constitutional Court of Spain as breaching the 1978 Constitution. Different headquarters of the Generalitat de Catalunya were searched and 14 people were arrested, including high ranking administrative staff, and company CEO's involved in the preparation of the referendum. Simultaneously, several printing and media companies were searched looking for ballot papers and boxes. More than 140 websites were shut down by the Spanish justice and police.
Sol Picó Monllor is a Spanish dancer and choreographer. She has studied Spanish dance, ballet, and contemporary dance, and combines different techniques and languages in her productions in a groundbreaking way. In 1993 she created the Sol Picó Company, with which she has become one of the most heterodox choreographers and dancers of the Spanish contemporary scene. She has received numerous awards, including 10 Premios Max, the National Dance Award of Catalonia (2004), the City of Barcelona Dance Award (2015) and the National Dance Award of Spain (2016).
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