Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are a set of individuals that communicate, interact and collaborate; in several forms and degrees of participation which are eco-systemically integrated; mainly via a platform of participation on the Internet, on which they depend; and aiming at knowledge-making and sharing. The paper will rst provide an historical contextualization OCCs. Then, it will show how the development of OCCs is fuelled by and contributes to, the rise of a free culture movement defending and advocating the creation of digital commons, and provide an empirically grounded de nition of free culture movement. The empirical analyses is based content analysis of 80 interviews to free culture practitioners, promoters and activists with an international background or rooted in Europe, USA and Latino-America and the content analysis of two seminar discussions. The data collection was developed from 2008 to 2010.
Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are a set of individuals that communicate, interact and collaborate; in several forms and degrees of participation which are eco-systemically integrated; mainly via a platform of participation on the Internet, on which they depend; and aiming at knowledge-making and sharing (Fuster Morell, 2010). OCCs based on certain governance conditions result on the building of a digital commons. Digital commons are de ned as an information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusivedible, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources (Fuster Morell, 2010). OCCs early development and cultural roots could be found back in 1950s; continue through the appearance and success of the rst OCCs around Free and Open source software development in the 1990s, to the later developments in the rst decade of the 21st century, particularly with the explosion of commercial Web 2.0, and the new frontiers of potentiality that are evolving. The paper politically contextualize the OCCs. It will show how the development of OCCs is fuelled by and contributes to, the rise of a free culture movement defending and advocating the creation of digital commons. To then provide an empirically grounded de nition of free culture movement. The empirical analyses is based content analysis of 80 interviews to free culture practitioners, promoters and activists with an international background or rooted in Europe, USA and Latino-America and the content analysis of two seminar discussions.1 The data collection was developed from 2008 to 2010. 2
A rst cultural origin of OCCs is the hacker culture. The hacking culture emerged
in the 1950s around the Arti cial Intelligence Lab of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). The hacking culture was based rst on a sense of
exploration and creative enjoyment with technology, and afterwards on the
optimization of technology. The hacker ethic is characterized by a passion to create
and share knowledge and to consider collective creation as a humorous and
enjoyable action (Himanen, 2001). A hacker is de ned as a person interested in
experimenting with technology and its social uses, who acts to distribute
knowledge in an e ective, free and creative way; and for whom the Internet is not
only a medium, but also a political space (Raymond, 2000, 2001). In this rst
period of software coding, most of the software circulated freely between the
developer-hackers
Politics seminar on commons, Berkeley, 7th December, 2009. 2 Free software de nition by the Free software foundation. Retrieved May 28, 2010 from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html (May 28, 2010). WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link) was a pioneering online community established in 1985. Its participants were mainly composed of members of the back to the land movement based on the Californian coast. A third point of reference for OCCs are previous experiences of participatory knowledge-making. The OCCs are characterized by their participative approach to knowledge-making. However, the OCCs do not represent the rst attempt to develop a participatory and collective approach to knowledge-building. Some examples of previous experiences of collective and collaborative methodologies for knowledge-building are: Italian labour co-research; women's groups of self-awareness and feminist epistemology; French institutional analysis; the Latino-American action-participation methodologies and communitarian research in general (Malo, 2004). The academic communities were initially also constituted by highly collaborative environments and communitarian dynamics. OCCs take special advantage of new technologies of information and communication (NTI) to develop ideas already present in these previous experiences. 3
The rst OCCs to appear were development communities based around software
programming. By the early 1990s, the Internet had become a medium for
collaboration among programmers. Linus Torvalds from Helsinki suggested, in 1991,
the further development of the Linux kernel (a key component) to a newsgroup
on the Internet. This led to the rise of one of the rst and largest OCCs on
collaborative software development. The work involved Linux joining the previous
work of GNU, which led to the rst completely free operating system built by
a development community (Stalder, 2010). Since the 1990s development
communities have proliferated. Free software became very popular and most of the
software infrastructure that powers the internet is FLOSS (Weber, 2004). In 2007
Wheeler, drawing on an extensive survey of the rate of FLOSS adoption across
various sectors, concluded that in many cases FLOSS is more used than
proprietary competitiors productus according to various measures (Wheeler, 2007).3
From the late 1990s onwards, some alternative terms for free software came into
common usage, including open source software (FOSS), software libre, free, libre
and open source software (FLOSS). The distinction between free software and
open software is not so much a question of the software itself, but of two
different ideological approaches. Whereas free software emphasizes the liberty free
software gives users, open source instead emphasizes productive e ciency and
business models based on open collaboration (Stallman, 1996).
3 For example, several of the Internets most basic technologies, such as the domain
name system, have since its beginnings used FLOSS. Other components such as mail
and web servers also run predominantly on FLOSS (Wheeler, 2007). According to
web analytics rm Netcraft, in August 2010, 56% of webservers run on Apache based
and free software. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.netcraft.com.
2001: From free software to free culture: The expansion
of OCCs to other immaterial content
At the beginning of the millennium, the spread of the Internet and personal
computers lowered barriers, the expansion of education, particularly in the global
North, and knowledge-based markets saw larger sections of the population able
to communicate and collaborate in online settings and holding the skills for
engaging in activities of cultural creativity. Additionally, starting in the 1980s and
1990s a group of USA academics mostly law scholars began to worry about the
expansion of Intellectual Property in the neoliberal frame and initiated action
in order to protect creativity and the public domain.4 These academics helped
develop the idea of the intellectual commons and invented Creative Commons
licenses with the aid of Lawrence Lessig (2004). Creative Commons Licenses
enable sharing and develop derivative work from previous materials and were
adopted to support online collaboration
Larry Lessig and among others.
In rich countries, most of the younger generations grow up with access to
education at di erent levels, and with access to the Internet and use the Internet in
their everyday lives. These generations are known as digital born or digital
native generations (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008; Tapscott, 2008). The normalcy of the
online multi-interactive environment for the digital generation has resulted in
what Lessig calls the Remix Culture, also known as read/write culture (Lessig,
2008). The Remix Culture of the digital generation is characterized by: easy
access to text information and knowledge and audio-visual materials; easy
access and the capacity to use programs and tools to create and elaborate new
cultural products; proactive or prosumer attitudes, that is a combination of a
consumer attitude and a producer attitude, an identity of creators, not of
consumers or spectators; and the habit of public exposure and living in public. Alex
Kozak from Students for Free Culture Berkeley puts it this way: It is part of
the identity of my generation to create and share content on large social
networks, organise events online and share with each other our favourite music and
movies, sometimes legally and sometimes not,
2006: The explosion of commercial Web 2.0 While previous developments are key for OCCs following a commons logic, another approach appears in the new economy based on information access and sharing. In the fall of 2001, the technological industry su ered what was called 5 Website of the Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org/ the dot-com crisis, which marked a turning point for the sector. The companies that had survived the dot-com collapse had some things in common. With the spread of the Internet during the 1990s, a major shift from storing data online and virtually instead of on individual computers took place, known as data cloud. With data cloud more and more commercial providers specializing in services for data storage and exchange online appeared. The new economy of information access and sharing, also known as Web 2.0 or Wikinomics, is an innovative economic trend based on the commercialization of ows and services of information and knowledge by multinational communication (O'Reilly, 2005; Tapscott & Williams, 2007).6 The most distinctive example of the New economy is Google. Examples can also be found in YouTube, MySpace or Flickr, platforms provided by Multinational Communication Companies.7 The development of a new economy based on information access and sharing contributed substantially to the popularization of the multi-interactive infrastructure of the web. However, major accessibility (linked to Internet di usion) instead of functionality is what distinguishes the Web 2.0 from the Web 1.0 (Shirky, 2008). The new economy was inspired by the innovations presented in the previous sections (I.e. FLOSS, Wikipedia, Indymedia, among others) to de ne a new business model based on the data cloud. However, in the light of this research, the corporation as infrastructure provider also changed the conditions of use of infrastructure in contrast to previous cases based on commons logic. In this period, OCCs based on commons logic and GJM position as protagonists in the use of the technology was taken by the communications companies of the new economy. A media activist from Milan characterized this stage with the expression the market is going beyond us (A, Foti, Notes Networked Politics seminar on Networked Politics, Berlin, June 2006). The expansion of commercial type of infrastructure providers online based on a corporate logic stresses the con ict with OCCs based instead of a commons logic. Previous empirical research sheds light on and explains the di erence between a commons logic and a corporate logic in shaping collective action in the digital era (Fuster Morell, 2010). In the light of this research, it can be predicted that in coming years, the possibilities for political mobilization on free culture issues will be likely to increase. 6
The development of OCCs is also fuelled by and contributes to the rise of the
movement defending and advocating the creation of digital commons. Several
6 The term Web 2.0 was originally used to represent a shift in the business model,
a new way of doing business, after the dot-com crisis (O'Reilly, 2005; Tapscott &
Williams, 2007).
7 YouTube, with the slogan "Broadcast yourself", is a website to archive, share and
comment on homemade videos; Myspace is a website for social networking where
each person has their own page to present him or herself and interact with others;
and Flickr is a website to archive, share and comment on photos.
events, campaigns and international networks led to the formation of a free
culture movement. The International networks such as the commons international
network of supporters of Creative Commons licenses (Dobusch, 2009), the recent
Campaign against the Telecom Pack Reform in the European Union
According to Tilly social movements are de ned as a series of challenges to established authorities, especially national authorities, in the name of an unrepresented constituency (Tilly 1983, p. 466). The FCM ts Tilly de nition of a social movement insofar as it aims to challenge authorities in a traditional sense in order to reform the Intellectual Proprietary regime and claim the support of public institutions for free culture expression, in particular by protecting and preserving digital commons. However, a national authority is not its main target, it focuses instead on the European Union and the World Intellectual Property 9 Sources: Amelia Andersdotter (Member European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate
Party) and programe Pirate Party 2009. Retrieved from http://www.piratpartiet.
se/
Organization (WIPO), a sub-organization of the United Nations. For example,
the campaign against the approval of software patents in the European
Parliament in 2006 was one of the major victories of the FCM
Additionally, the FCM can be de ned as a movement of movements. It is the result of the con uence and networking of several experiences and diverse trajectories based on a common set of values and principles, the most important of which are: accessibility and the ow of information and knowledge; creativity; participative formats; network settings; and communal ownership. Although still emerging and loose in character, the celebration of the rst international forum on free culture and access to knowledge in October 2009 marks one of the moments in which an umbrella framing of these various collective actions took place. On this occasion, a coalition of 200 organizations from several continents drafted and signed a common Charter for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge. Additionally, alongside the informal exchanges between individuals or organizations engaged in collective projects, Diani identi es other two elements that de ne a social movement: con ictual orientations to clearly identi
ed opponents and a shared collective identity (Diani, 2003, p. 301). The above mentioned Charter for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge is an example of how the FCM frames its opponents as political institutions regulating against its claims and multinational corporations (and their lobbies) as adopting monopolistic and abusive practices against the principles of the net. In line with the cultural theory approach to the de nition of social movements, it also raises a sense of injustice (Ryan & Gamson, 2006). However, shared collective action seems to be the least (or most loosely) developed dimension in the FCM.
The FCM is in its very early stages and is still developing its collective identity. There is no single term to refer to it, and although free culture is the most common one, other terms used include the Free knowledge movement and the Universal access to knowledge movement, among others. The term which frames the movement, that is free culture, was originally the title of a 2004 book by law scholar Laurence Lessig. Since then, it has been widely adopted. However, internal confrontations on de ning the movements identity are also present. A survey on the use of free culture term of 256 free culture initiatives in Brazil concluded that there is inconsistency between the concept of free culture as held by practitioners and that used by theorists (referring to Lessigs de nition of free culture and Stallmans de nition of free software) (Reia, 2009). Additionally, the decentralized orientation of the FCM, as well as OCCs, stresses a challenge that already exists within the GJM, that is how intense interaction among members should be, and how homogeneous should a way of thinking be before we may speak of movements or collective identities. The repertoire of action includes a range of strategies. From the building of the digital commons to lobbying for legal and policy changes that a ect the free circulation of information and the governance of the Internet. The FCM is composed by OCCs foundations, peer-to-peer infrastructures, international networks, speci c campaigns, lobbies, alternative licenses, students and librarian groups, blog rings, meet-ups and local collectives, ash mobs, and individuals.10 The recent history of the FCMs goes hand in hand with the cultural conception, evolution and di usion of NTI.
The FCMs seems to depend on the level of di usion of NTI because it is more
visible in places where accessibility to the Internet is greater. Furthermore, the
Free Culture frame seems to be moulded by the context of political opportunity
and overall socio-political schemata of each place. FCM in the USA has closer
connections with entrepreneurship and with universities (E. Stark, Interview,
February 1, 2009; B. Moskowitz, Interview, December 16, 2008; J. Jacob,
Interview, December 15, 2008; D. Harris, Interview, December 7, 2008). Additionally,
the San Francisco Bay Area hosts the headquarters of a signi cant proportion
of prominent organizations supporting the FCM. In Europe, the FCM has
instead developed more connections with the autonomous sector of the GJM.11 In
Latin America, the FCM is linked to popular education and the culture of the
periphery as seen from the popular expression of the favelas (P. Ortellado,
Informal interview, January 28, 2009). Furthermore, a particular case is Brazil where
there is institutional support for Free Culture from the Lula Government. In
this regard, the Brazilian government has adopted and promoted Free and Open
Source Software and promotes a Free Culture industry, among others. In the
Brazilian context, a counter-view of the o cial discourse around Free Culture
has also emerged, reclaiming a vision of Free Culture not seen as a commodity,
and the development of mechanisms to restrict State control over the
production of culture and expression. As the Brazilian Epidemia collective wrote in
their manifesto; Free Culture is not a characteristic of the product alone. (...)
Culture is free when those who relate to it are also free (...). Free Culture is
a step towards the construction of a new society (Epidemia, 2009). FCM
challenges traditional conceptions of social movements. However, similarities with
other social movements can be pointed out particularly concerning its
contemporary, the GJM. Boyle suggests that free cultural activism is a new form of
environmentalism (Boyle, 1997). However, other authors claim that a
comparison with music-based subcultures is more appropriate than any similarities with
traditional conceptions of social movements
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