=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=The emergence of a free culture movement An introductory historical contextualization of online creation communities for the building of digital commons
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-739/paper_7.pdf
|volume=Vol-739
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/okcon/Morell11
}}
==The emergence of a free culture movement An introductory historical contextualization of online creation communities for the building of digital commons==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-739/paper_7.pdf
An Introductory Historical Contextualization of
Online Creation Communities for the Building
of Digital Commons: The Emergence of a Free
Culture Movement
Mayo Fuster Morell
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Mayo.Fuster@EUI.eu
Abstract. Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are a set of individ-
uals 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 first pro-
vide 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 com-
mons, and provide an empirically grounded definition of free culture
movement. The empirical analyses is based content analysis of 80 in-
terviews 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.
1 Introduction
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 In-
ternet, 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 defined as an informa-
tion 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 in-
teraction 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 first OCCs around Free and Open
source software development in the 1990s, to the later developments in the first
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 defini-
tion 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 From the 1950s: Cultural roots of OCCs: pioneer online
communities
A first cultural origin of OCCs is the hacker culture. The hacking culture emerged
in the 1950s around the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology (MIT). The hacking culture was based first on a sense of
exploration and creative enjoyment with technology, and afterwards on the opti-
mization of technology. The hacker ethic is characterized by a passion to create
and share knowledge and to consider collective creation as a humorous and en-
joyable action (Himanen, 2001). A hacker is defined as a person interested in
experimenting with technology and its social uses, who acts to distribute knowl-
edge in an effective, free and creative way; and for whom the Internet is not
only a medium, but also a political space (Raymond, 2000, 2001). In this first
period of software coding, most of the software circulated freely between the
developer-hackers (Castells, 2002). However, in the 1970s a proprietary sense of
the software started to grow, meaning restrictions on the use of software and the
incorporation of a commercial sense. Richard Stallman, a programmer from the
Artificial Intelligence Lab of the MIT, claimed the risk of the privatization of
software to be an attack on the freedom of expression. In the famous words of
Stallman: ”Free as in free speech, not necessarily free as in free beer”.2 In order
to preserve the free character of the software, Stallman founded the GNU project
in 1984 to develop an operating system that was to be completely free. Stall-
man also founded, in Boston in 1985, the Free Software Foundation, and with
legal assistance established the General Public License and the Lesser General
Public License, which allowed for the legal protection of free software (Stalder,
2010). Another cultural reference of the OCCs is the counter-culture movement
of the 1960s. In the book From counterculture to cyberculture Turner presents
in detail the roots of cyberculture in the American counterculture of the 1960s
(2006). One of the first social sectors to see meaning in the new technologies of
information and communication was the North-American counterculture. The
1
Networked Politics seminar on Networked Politics, Berlin, June 2006 and Networked
Politics seminar on commons, Berkeley, 7th December, 2009.
2
Free software definition 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 estab-
lished 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 refer-
ence 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 first attempt to develop a participatory
and collective approach to knowledge-building. Some examples of previous expe-
riences of collective and collaborative methodologies for knowledge-building are:
Italian labour co-research; women’s groups of self-awareness and feminist episte-
mology; French institutional analysis; the Latino-American action-participation
methodologies and communitarian research in general (Malo, 2004). The aca-
demic communities were initially also constituted by highly collaborative envi-
ronments 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 From the 1990s: The appearance of the first online
creation communities: Free and Open source software
projects
The first OCCs to appear were development communities based around software
programming. By the early 1990s, the Internet had become a medium for collab-
oration 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 first and largest OCCs on col-
laborative software development. The work involved Linux joining the previous
work of GNU, which led to the first completely free operating system built by
a development community (Stalder, 2010). Since the 1990s development com-
munities 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 propri-
etary 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 dif-
ferent ideological approaches. Whereas free software emphasizes the liberty free
software gives users, open source instead emphasizes productive efficiency 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 firm Netcraft, in August 2010, 56% of webservers run on Apache based
and free software. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.netcraft.com.
4 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 com-
puters 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 en-
gaging 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 (Creative Commons, 2009). In this con-
text, OCCs based on content other than software began to grow. New free culture
expressions emerged with the aim of collaboratively creating cultural content
and generating universal access to knowledge. The most important example of
this is Wikipedia. It is an online encyclopedia founded in 2001 which has grown
enormously since then. The strategy to build an autonomous infrastructure of
communication and coordination within the GJM for the global confluence of
the movement after the events of Seattle against the World Trade Organization
in 1999 represents another important step in the formation of OCCs around
social memory processes (Milan, 2009). The structure of communication of the
Global Justice Movement (GJM) was extremely innovative at the time, and
Indymedia (an alternative media website) became a reference point for open
publishing and content generated by users (Haas, 2007). The distinctive empha-
sis on the participatory methods characteristic of the GJM, in contrast to the
more centralized or hierarchical methods of the past, has also been applied to
the role and nature of knowledge generated by the GJM (Fuster Morell, 2004;
Santos, 2007; Wainwright, 2005). Furthermore, with the growing importance of
NTI in society, access to NTI and its consequences, defined as communication
rights, is becoming an area of continuous struggle, and was incorporated into
the GJMs agenda (Milan & Hintz, 2004). In 1999, influenced by the impact of
Indymedia, journalism produced ”by the people” began to flourish, enabled in
part by emerging Internet and networking technologies, such as weblogs, chat
rooms, message boards, wikis and mobile computing. Furthermore, hundreds of
virtual news communities have been created and spread using Free Culture ide-
als, generating a critical media ecosystem, experimenting with different regimes
in terms of intellectual property rights and conceptions, ready to mobilize and
diffuse the alarm when a new impediment to free circulation appears (Keren,
2006). Another relevant part of OCCs configuration is the first generation to be
born digital. The first ”digital generations” were born in the 1980s and 1990s.
4
Among them Pamela Samuelson, Jessica Litman, James Boyle, Yochai Benkler,
Larry Lessig and among others.
In rich countries, most of the younger generations grow up with access to edu-
cation at different levels, and with access to the Internet and use the Internet in
their everyday lives. These generations are known as digital born or digital na-
tive 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 ac-
cess 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 con-
sumers 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 net-
works, organise events online and share with each other our favourite music and
movies, sometimes legally and sometimes not, (Buxton, 2009). Finally, the his-
tory of OCCs also saw an important moment with the European development
of file-sharing and peer-to-peer architectures of information to facilitate access
to cultural products. File sharing is the practice of making files available for
others to use though the Internet or smaller intranet networks (Bauwens, 2005).
A good example is the Swedish Pirate Bay. To defend the values of file-sharing,
a political party, called the Pirate Party, has also been formed in Sweden, which
won representation in the European elections in 2009. OCCs ideals have also
arrived in the scientific world with the building of digital commons with sci-
entific content. Several online mechanisms for scientific collaboration emerged,
such as the establishment of poles of empirical data (David, 2004). Furthermore,
an important historical moment for the emergence of OCCs guaranteeing access
to scientific knowledge were the struggles over access to anti-retroviral drugs
to treat HIV/AIDS in South Africa during the 1990s. This impulse led to the
wish to reclaim the public character of research through open access to research
results. One example of this is the Public Library of Science (PloS). PloS is a
non-profit, open access scientific publishing project funded in 2001, aimed at
creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under
an open content license.5 Finally, another preeminent example of mobilizing for
access to knowledge is Students For Free Culture. Students For Free Culture
is composed by a network of over 35 chapters in universities. The chapters are
mainly in United States universities but are expanding in other countries.
5 2006: The explosion of commercial Web 2.0
While previous developments are key for OCCs following a commons logic, an-
other approach appears in the new economy based on information access and
sharing. In the fall of 2001, the technological industry suffered 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 compa-
nies 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 flows 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. How-
ever, major accessibility (linked to Internet diffusion) 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 define 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 technol-
ogy was taken by the communications companies of the new economy. A media
activist from Milan characterized this stage with the expression the market is go-
ing 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 conflict with OCCs based instead
of a commons logic. Previous empirical research sheds light on and explains the
difference 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 A free culture movement in formation?
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 cul-
ture 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 (Breindl,
2010), and the celebration of the first free culture and access to knowledge fo-
rum in 2009 constitute some of the key moments of confluence. Additionally,
the OCCs for the building of digital commons are instances of participation in
this FCM. By producing digital commons, OCCs fulfill the broad political goals
of the FCM. OCCs for the building of digital commons, based on a commons
logic, are arenas in which the communities clash and contrast with OCCs based
instead on corporate logic, challenging the established proprietary production
system of information and knowledge and a corporate oriented adoption of NTI.
However, free culture activism and builders of OCCs are not necessarily the same
people. Plus, a common identity for both profiles does not yet exist. Several po-
litical aims are present in the FCM discourse: first, to preserve digital commons
and empower OCCs through the availability of infrastructure for sharing and
decentralised creativity and collaboration based on conditions which empower
communities vis--vis infrastructure providers and guarantee their individual and
collective autonomy and independence. Second, the FCM aims to make impor-
tant information available to the public for discussion and ultimately to increase
freedom of expression by guaranteeing the possibility to intervene and the free
circulation of information in public life. North American free culture activists
frame this goal as inspired by the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s and aim
to have a similar impact to the Free Speech Movement. In Alex Kozaks words:
Like the Free Speech movement, we are fighting against the top-down control of
speech and are motivated by beliefs about basic rights. The differences are in our
ability to organise electronically our Mario Savio [one of the leaders of the Free
Speech Movement] is more likely to inspire with a blog post than with a speech,
(A. Kozak, Presentation at Networked Politics seminar on commons, Berkeley,
7th December, 2009). Third, the FCM aims to improve social justice and sol-
idarity, particularly in the global North/South context, by removing barriers
to access to knowledge goods. Fourth, in order to achieve the previous goals,
the movement seeks to influence policy making and reform copyright, patent,
and trademark law in the public interest, as well as the reform of the manage-
ment of scientific knowledge at Universities. Interestingly, the term ”political
remix” illustrates how the above claim is built. According to this research, po-
litical remix can be understood as the customization of the political message
according to the remix of each individuals preferences, supported by the use of
individual media. This means, on the one hand, not only pushing to see the
Free Culture message in mainstream old media, but activists themselves spread-
ing the free culture though their own means, contacts and audiences online. On
the other hand, an activist does not consume or adopt the political message on
free culture as a package, but creates the message and customizes it. Generally,
the message combines the private and personal information of the person who
spreads it with information of public interest. However, the FCM is not easily
characterized with traditional political categories. It it is better characterized by
political ambivalence.8 The form of collective aggregation of the FCM could be
one of the reasons that explain this political ambivalence. It tends to be specific,
mission oriented, and pragmatic. The FCM emerged around series of practices
and shared conception of knowledge and its politics. Moreover, and, importantly,
participants of the FCM do not need to agree on aspects that go beyond this
specific area. The aggregation on specific common objectives could be exempli-
fied with the case of Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors contribute on the base of very
diverse motivations (Glott, Schmidt, & Ghosh, 2009) additionally, through my
participant observation; I observed that Wikipedia editors can be situated across
the political spectrum (from right to left). The aggregation around Wikipedia,
however, is mission oriented and based on a pragmatic approach to collabora-
tion in the common task of building of an online encyclopedia accessible to as
many people as possible. There is no expectation that the editors share a com-
mon program or common politics which goes beyond building an encyclopedia.
The same can be said about the FLOSS communities. Here too, the motiva-
tions to contribute are very diverse, but the communities focus on specific goals
of solfware development with a shared politics of knowledge (Ghosh, Ruediger,
Bernhard, & Robles, 2002; Weber, 2004). FLOSS can be seen as a rich political
expression from the feminist theory approaches to the political, with however, a
political agnosticism. Colleman stresses the firm denial by FLOSS developers of
having any deliberate political agenda, in a conventional conception of politics.
Though as Colleman argues, this political agnosticism has its own complexity. As
Coleman puts it:while (among FOSS developers) it is perfectly acceptable and
encouraged to have a panel on free software at an anti-globalization conference,
FOSS developers would suggest that it is unacceptable to claim that FOSS has
as one of its goals anti-globalization, or for that matter any political program
a subtle but vital difference (Colleman, 2004, p. 1). Colleman and Hill (2004)
points to FLOSS‘s political agnosticism and its resistance to defining FLOSS in
traditional political terms as one of the factors which would favor the traveling
of the FLOSS and its adoption in diverse terrains. In the words of Colleman
and Hill: Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been adopted as a polit-
ical tool by leftist activists. At the same time, it has been embraced by large
corporations to extend profits and has been criticized as an integral force in late
capitalism. It has been adopted by members of the growing Commons move-
ment as a model for limiting the power of capitalism (2004, p. 1). This political
agnosticism could be read as an instrumental approach, a way to create more
force around the adoption of FLOSS; however, it cannot be explained simply
in terms of instrumentalism. FCM aggregation is built around specific missions
with a strong tendency towards performative politics (that is, around building
practices), and in the land of politics of knowledge, not involving other dimen-
sions such as those linked to political ideology in a classic sense. As a result,
there is around the FCM, a large political spectrum of participants, and the
8
Benkler suggests that the FCM open an opportunity to approach the left and liber-
tarian agenda (Y. Benkler, personal communication, June 29, 2010).
aggregation is based on their communality around the conditions of access to
knowledge and the possibility to share and collaborate around information and
knowledge creation. Around these issues of access to knowledge and the digital
rights linked to sharing and collaboration, the FCM develops political actions,
such as the Pirate Party which aims to give a political representation to the the
interests of the FCM, or lobbying and political campaigns in the most traditional
sense. In this regard, the FCM represents an emerging source of conflict and a
clash in society around several conceptions of knowledge. The FCM grew over
a new source of aggregation in society which is able of put together and create
collaboration between very diverse forces, and of actors which are part of the
whole political spectrum. However, the FCM does not aggregate around conflicts
or areas which go beyond the politics of knowledge (which could undermine the
possibility of collaboration around the shared terrain). It is worth highlighting
that more recently, linked to changes in the regulation of Intellectual Property
and the lobbying pressure of the cultural industry, a more conventional political
dimension of the FCM is gaining in importance. However, the tendency towards
defining specific common goals and targets bringing together a plurality of ac-
tors, also applies to the more politically conventional expressions of the FCM,
such as protest actions, campaigns, lobbing activities or/ and search of politi-
cal representation. For example, the agenda of the Pirate Party with political
representation at the European Parliament is limited to issues linked to knowl-
edge policy and its voters are part of the diverse political spectrum.9 Finally,
the political support that the FCM gains in institutions tends to be different in
the North than in the South. While in the North, particularly in Europe, the
traditional left has been reluctant to adopt and support the FCM agenda (per-
haps because FCM challenges traditional left visions of culture and knowledge,
and its forms of collective aggregation); in the South, where the consequences
of the current conditions to access to knowledge (such as in terms of access to
medicines, education materials, etc) can be seen to be more dramatic, lefties
parties, such as the Workers party in Brazil, has adopted the FCM agenda as
one of its priorities.
7 Defining the movement dimension of free culture
According to Tilly social movements are defined as a series of challenges to
established authorities, especially national authorities, in the name of an unrep-
resented constituency (Tilly 1983, p. 466). The FCM fits Tilly definition 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 Parlia-
ment in 2006 was one of the major victories of the FCM (Breindl, 2010). The
same can be said with regard to the achievement of the 2007 lobbying campaign
at the WIPO in order to introduce a development agenda, which underlined the
need for access to intellectual property to meet development goals, regarding,
for example access to medicines (Stalder, 2010). Other authors have pointed
out the transnational evolution of social mobilizations, (della Porta & Tarrow
2005; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Rucht, 1999), as is the case for the GJM (della
Porta, 2009). Additionally, focusing on state-related outcomes has kept scholars
from developing a comprehensive understanding of how social movements effect
change in socio-economic and cultural contexts (Amenta & Caren, 2004; Earl,
2000; Melucci, 1996). Social movement scholars have traditionally viewed move-
ment outcomes narrowly, as the ability of a movement to achieve political or
policy goals (Amenta & Caren, 2004; Gamson, 1992). Melucci states how a so-
cial movement entails a breach of the limits of compatibility of the system within
which the action itself takes place (1996, pp. 29-30). The FCM adopted the goal
of putting participative knowledge-making into practice. However, in order to
make it possible, it engaged in developing legal innovations, protest and lobby-
ing political institutions (Frickel & Gross, 2005; Moore, 1996). Those involved in
the Free culture movement are not only interested in policy outcomes, but also
contest cultural values and beliefs (Earl, 2000), leading to the construction of
OCCs as alternative systems of production (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2000; Rao,
1998; Schneiberg, 2002). Very significant examples in this regard are the Free
and Open source projects, which transformed the production of software in the
NTI industry. Recent research shows that movements engaged in production as
a mode of opposition have made significant creative and economic contributions
to society (Dahlander & Magnusson, 2005; Shah, 2005; von Hippel, 2005). Fur-
thermore, a focus on protest risks an incomplete understanding of how cycles of
contestation evolve. Contestation is not likely to remain constant, mobilization
may characterize early stages but then transform. As is typical of New Social
Movements, the movement struggles for broad cultural change as opposed to
material claims. fitting into the current shift towards the post-material (Ap-
padurai, 1996). Touraine stressed that the social control of the main cultural
patterns, that is, of the patterns through which our relationships with the envi-
ronment are normatively organized (Touraine, 2008, p. 213) or ”great cultural
orientations (Tourraine, 1981) are at stake in social movements. This could have
no better expression than in the Free culture movement, which contests a certain
conception of culture and the protocols which guide the possibility to construct
culture in a digital environment. According to della Porta and Diani, a social
movement dynamic is present when single episodes of collective action are per-
ceived as components of a longer-lasting action, rather than discrete events; and
when those who are engaged in them feel linked by ties of solidarity and of ideal
communion with protagonists of other analogous mobilization (della Porta &
Diani, 2006, p. 23). The FCM can be considered as in a stage of emergence and
formation. Additionally, the FCM is less centralized than traditional social move-
ments, made up of loosely connected communities that independently organize
or produce digital goods and which occasionally engage in common campaigns.
Additionally, the FCM can be defined as a movement of movements. It is the
result of the confluence and networking of several experiences and diverse tra-
jectories based on a common set of values and principles, the most important
of which are: accessibility and the flow of information and knowledge; creativ-
ity; participative formats; network settings; and communal ownership. Although
still emerging and loose in character, the celebration of the first 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 conti-
nents drafted and signed a common Charter for innovation, creativity and access
to knowledge. Additionally, alongside the informal exchanges between individ-
uals or organizations engaged in collective projects, Diani identifies other two
elements that define a social movement: conflictual orientations to clearly identi-
fied opponents and a shared collective identity (Diani, 2003, p. 301). The above
mentioned Charter for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge is an ex-
ample of how the FCM frames its opponents as political institutions regulating
against its claims and multinational corporations (and their lobbies) as adopt-
ing monopolistic and abusive practices against the principles of the net. In line
with the cultural theory approach to the definition 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 iden-
tity. 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 defining 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 definition of free
culture and Stallmans definition 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 affect the free circulation of information and
the governance of the Internet. The FCM is composed by OCCs foundations,
peer-to-peer infrastructures, international networks, specific campaigns, lobbies,
alternative licenses, students and librarian groups, blog rings, meet-ups and lo-
cal collectives, flash mobs, and individuals.10 The recent history of the FCMs
goes hand in hand with the cultural conception, evolution and diffusion of NTI.
The FCMs seems to depend on the level of diffusion 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, Inter-
view, December 15, 2008; D. Harris, Interview, December 7, 2008). Additionally,
the San Francisco Bay Area hosts the headquarters of a significant proportion
of prominent organizations supporting the FCM. In Europe, the FCM has in-
stead 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, Infor-
mal 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 official 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 produc-
tion 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 chal-
lenges traditional conceptions of social movements. However, similarities with
other social movements can be pointed out particularly concerning its contem-
porary, the GJM. Boyle suggests that free cultural activism is a new form of
environmentalism (Boyle, 1997). However, other authors claim that a compari-
son with music-based subcultures is more appropriate than any similarities with
traditional conceptions of social movements (Dafermos, 2009; Dafermos & Soder-
berg, 2009; Gelder, 2007). In conclusion, the Free culture movement (FCM) is
defined as a network of individuals and organizations, linked by more or less
dense networks, solidarity ties and moments of confluence, sharing a loose col-
10
The more visible organizations and expressions of the FCM are the Linux oper-
ating system, the Free Software Foundation, Pirate Bay file-sharing architecture,
Indymedia an alternative media platform, Wikipedia an online free encyclopedia,
Creative Commons Licenses, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Knowl-
edge Foundation, the Public Library of Science archive, and the Students for Free
Culture network, among others.
11
The FCM in Southern Europe developed connections with networks formed by
the alternative media, the hackmeetings process, movements in defense of free
circulation of people and the squatter movement. For example, Copyfight (http:
//www.elastico.net/copyfight) and Fadaiat (http://www.fadaiat.net) have a
special interest in connecting the free circulation of information with the free circu-
lation of people.
lective identity and a common set of values and principles (most importantly
accessibility and the flow of information and knowledge, creativity, participa-
tive formats, network settings and communal ownership), whose acting together
aims to challenge forms of knowledge-making and accessibility by engaging in the
construction of digital commons and mobilizations directed against the media
and cultural industries, their lobbies, and political institutions (at the national,
regional and global levels).
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