Participants


Legal Perspectives and User Access


Consumers International / Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation, eXgae, La Quadrature du Net, Pirate Partiet, Knowledge Ecology International / James Love, European Digital Rights, Franziska Heine, ScambioEtico, Alan Toner, Fundación Karisma, Carlos Sanchez Almeida, Asociación de Internautas / Javier Cuchí, Mario Pena, David Maeztu, ASACC / Carmen Zapata, Spanish Network of Music Schools / Lluis Cabrera, Josep Jover, Javier Candeira, IT-Political Association, Open Standards Alliance, ScriptumLibre, David Hammerstein

Moderators: Simona Levi (eXgae), Jeremie Zimmermann (La Quadrature du Net), Paolo Brini (Scambioetico) y Maddish Falzoni (eXgae)


Economies, New P2P Models, and Sustainable Distribution


Jeremy Rifkin (via video conference), John Howkins, P2P Foundation / Michel Bauwens, Koleman Strumpf (via video conference), Joost Smiers, Dmytri Kleiner, Safe Creative, Traficantes de Sueños, Platoniq, Yproductions, Ignacio de Castro Arribas, Maria Claudia de Azevedo Borges, Conservas

Moderators: Elena Fraj (eXgae), Olivier Schulbaum (Platoniq), Ignacio de Castro Arribas (Questions about the Harvard Inform)


Education and Access to Knowledge


Anne Ostergaard, Students for Free Culture / Ben Moskowitz, FLOSS Manuals, Communia, Kim Tucker, Free Knowledge Institute, Creative Commons España / Ignasi Labastida, Alqua, Epidemia / Pablo Ortellado, La Casa Invisible / Florencio Cabello, Universidad Nómada

Moderators: Wouter Tebbens (Free Knowledge Institute), David Jacovkis (Free Knowledge Institute)


Free Software and Open Standards: Knowledge Sharing, Hacker Philosophy, and Tools for Action


Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education / Nagarjuna G. (via video conference), Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure / Alberto Barrionuevo – Roberto Santos, Dyne / Jaromil, Hackmeeting, Margarita Padilla, Guifi, Isaac Hacksimov

Moderators: Josianito Llorente (eXgae) and Isaac Hacksimov


Organizational Logic and Political Implications of Free Culture


David Bollier, Hilary Wainwright, Felix Stalder, David Evan Harris, Jamie King, Networked Politics / Mayo Fuster, Vittorio Bertola, Joan Subirats, Marco Berlinguer, Exit, Jack J. Marxer, Toni Verger

Moderators: Mayo Fuster Morell (Networked Politics)

General Coordination: eXgae

*Participant Details*


Legal Perspectives and User Access


Consumers International / Jeremy Malcolm

(Top of Page)

Consumers International (CI) is the world federation of consumer groups that, working together with its members, serves as the only independent and authoritative global voice for consumers. With over 220 member organizations in 115 countries, CI is building a powerful international movement to help protect and empower consumers everywhere.

Jeremy Malcolm works for Consumers International in its Asia-Pacific office in Kuala Lumpur coordinating its projects on Access to Knowledge (A2K) and other issues of communications rights and media justice. Prior to this position Jeremy was an information technology and intellectual property lawyer, admitted to practice in Australia and New York. Jeremy completed his PhD thesis in Law at Murdoch University in 2008 which was the first doctoral examination of the Internet Governance Forum. His hobbies include open source software development.

http://a2knetwork.org

http://www.consumersinternational.org/

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

(Top of Page)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense when our freedoms in the networked world come under attack. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 — well before the Internet was on most people’s radar — and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

Blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists, EFF achieves significant victories on behalf of consumers and the general public. EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations. By mobilizing more than 50,000 concerned citizens through our Action Center, EFF beats back bad legislation. In addition to advising policymakers, EFF educates the press and public.

www.Eff.org

eXgae (now Xnet)

(Top of Page)

Multiply and share forth. For the free sharing of knowledge and culture.

Exgae (now Xnet), alma mater of the Free Culture Forum of Barcelona, is a non-profit organization that was born out of the desire of a group of associations and individuals to bring together alternative ways of creating, understanding and managing culture to those that are imposed by the entertainment industry and royalty management associations. Exgae (now Xnet) provides legal advice and tools towards changing habits and rules for a fairer and more beneficial use of digital rights.

Exgae (now Xnet) is the first legal consultancy service specializing in freeing all citizens and artists from the abuses of royalties management associations (such as SGAE in Spain) and other trade groups in the cultural industry. Exgae fights, alongside the great majority of society, for alternative forms of circulation of culture.

EXGAE (now Xnet) focuses on informing and assisting citizens, and particularly on providing legal advice to creators, artists, producers and culture professionals. 24 bodies, including associations and individuals, are behind this initiative, which began with the endorsement of almost 8000 people.

EXGAE (now Xnet) works on five fronts:

  • Providing ongoing legal advice.
  • Analyzing the social and political situation and designing proposals for intervention on legislation.
  • Organizing cultural events that aim to “normalize” free culture production and diffusion practices and make them known to the general public.
  • Amplifying the potential of national and international networks, by fostering and harmonizing the abilities of each node.
  • Creating viral campaigns

http://xnet-x.net/

La Quadrature du Net

(Top of Page)

La Quadrature du Net is a French organization fighting for free culture in Europe. They have led the European Campaign against the Telecoms Package and in favor of network neutrality. They have also defended the necessity of a judge rule to disconnect users for file sharing and copyright infringements.

www.laquadrature.net

Pirate Partiet / Amelia Andersdotter

(Top of Page)

The Pirate Partiet wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the European and Swedish parliaments.

Not only do we think these are worthwhile goals; we also believe they are realistically achievable on a European basis. The sentiments that led to the formation of the Pirate Partiet in Sweden are present throughout Europe. There are already similar political initiatives under way in several other member states. Together, we will be able to set a new course for a Europe that is currently heading in a very dangerous direction.

Amelia Andersdotter is a member of Piratpartiet, a political party from Sweden aiming towards a reform of intellectual property rights and the protection of citizens’ privacy in the digital environment.

Piratpartiet has chosen to work from within the legislative bodies of the state and the EU, rather lobbying those same bodies from the outside. As of June 7th 2009 the Piratpartiet has one deputy in the European parliament. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, there will be two parliamentarians in EP. The Piratpartiet is running for the Swedish national elections in 2010. “Piratpartiet” literally translates into “The Pirate Party”.

http://www.piratpartiet.se

Knowledge Ecology International / James Love

(Top of Page)

KEI is an organization that searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources. There are probably 5 billion people who live in the margins of the global economy, and an entire planet that depends upon knowledge for economic and personal development, education and health, political power and freedom, culture and fun. We are just now learning about the opportunities to manage knowledge resources in ways that are more efficient, more fair, and responsive to human needs.

KEI undertakes and publishes research and new ideas, engages in global public interest advocacy, provides technical advice to governments, NGOs and firms, enhances transparency of policy making, monitors actions of key actors, and provides forums for interested persons to discuss and debate KE topics.

James Love is the Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). Mr. Love is also the U.S. co-chair of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Working Group on Intellectual Property, chair of Essential Inventions, an advisor to the X-Prize Foundation on a prize for TB diagnostics, and a member of the UNITAID Expert Group on Patent Pools, the MSF Working Group on Intellectual Property, the Stop-TB Partnership working group on new drug development, and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards. He advises UN agencies, national governments, international and regional intergovernmental organizations and public health NGOs, and is the author of a number of articles and monographs on innovation and intellectual property rights. In 2006, Knowledge Ecology International received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

http://www.keionline.org/

European Digital Rights (EDRI)

(Top of Page)

European Digital Rights was founded in June 2002. Currently 29 privacy and civil rights organizations have EDRI membership. They are based or have offices in 18 different countries in Europe. Members of European Digital Rights have joined forces to defend civil rights in the information society. The need for cooperation among organizations active in Europe is increasing as more regulation regarding the internet, copyright and privacy is originating from European institutions, or from International institutions with strong impact in Europe.

http://www.edri.org/

Franziska Heine

(Top of Page)

Franzisda Heine initiated the most successful e-petition in German history, aimed to prevent a law which gives the German police organization the right to create and maintain censorship lists with websites which have to be blocked by German ISPs. It was signed more than 134,000 times. Franziska is part of the anti-censorship movement and is engaged in several activities and organizations which fight against surveillance, data mining, censorship and the destruction of common civil rights.

Scambioetico

(Top of Page)

ScambioEtico was born 4 years ago with the aim to legalize p2p of copyrighted content through global licenses, with a model already suggested by Electronic Frontier Foundation and properly adapted to Italian reality. During the years, some secondary objectives have been added, such as to reach an “armistice” on the war against p2p. Nowadays, it appears clear that p2p of copyrighted contents is a peculiar problem on the wider background of citizens digital rights.

www.scambioetico.org

Alan Toner

(Volver arriba)

Alan Toner, intellectual property and communications researcher, lost between New York, Buenos Aires, Rome, Berlin and Dublin. Mixing law, alcohol, politics and media in various languages since 1973. You may have met me at New York University, where I was a fellow at the Information Law Institute and the Engelberg Center on Law and Innovation, read something I wrote for Mute or Diagonal, or conspired in the shenanigans around the World Summit on the Information society when I worked with WSIS: We Seize!

http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/

Fundación Karisma

(Top of Page)

With the aim of supporting processes involving the appropriation of ICTs in different sectors of society and the role that this plays in the legal framework La Fundación Karisma has created a Working Group called: “Law, Internet and Society”. The Society aims to offer a space in which to reflect on these issues, in particular to defend the idea of access to and dissemination of knowledge. In this sense, it has become an important social player in itself and by providing support to other national and international organisations. Overall, it promotes research, analysis and action in response to the challenges entailed in digital environments relating to the legal framework in Colombia and Latin America.

http://www.karisma.org.co/

Carlos Sanchez Almeida

(Top of Page)

A Law graduate with a diploma in Catalan Civil Law, Carlos Sánchez Almeida was accepted into the Barcelona Bar in 1987. He has been a member of FrEE (Electronic Frontiers), an organization that works towards the defense of civil Rights on the Internet, and has also been contributor to several digital media projects. He currently he works exclusively as a lawyer

www.bufetalmeida.com

www.culturalibre.org

Asociación de Internautas / Javier Cuchí

(Top of Page)

A non profit association created in 1998 to fight against the rising cost of telephone use. Little by little, it has extended its domain to include the defense of free culture and the rights of internet users in the face of big telecommunication companies, service providers, technology companies and any other stakeholder.

www.internautas.org

David Maeztu

(Top of Page)

David Maeztu is a Law Graduate. He writes one of Spain’s most widely read blogs on Copyright, Culture and the Law.

http://derechoynormas.blogspot.com

ASACC / Carmen Zapata

(Top of Page)

Catalonia Concert Venues Association (Associació de Sales de Concerts de Catalunya – ASACC) was born with the objective of acknowledging the necessity of protecting, promoting and spreading Concert Venues. In 2007, ASACC encouraged a vindicating campaign in favour of live music and in defence of their spaces. As a result of this initiative, through which music clubs and musicians put their heads together, a commitment from the administration was born in order to search ways to guarantee the best conditions to work with concert venues. Agreements with the Ministry of Culture, Generalitat de Catalunya and City Councils, as well as other political representatives, look for consolidating this will of protecting, promoting and spreading both live music and the spaces that make it possible. According to this working direction, some amendments to the Bill of Games & Spectacle have been made from ASACC, some of which have been accepted.

Spanish Network of Music Schools / Lluis Cabrera

(Top of Page)

Lluis Cabrera (Taller de Músics, Barcelona)- Spokesman for the Spanish Network of Music Schools (Red Española de Escuelas de Música or REEM). http://redemusica.org/index.html REEM was born as an association of Spanish private music schools and its main aims are to defend the interests of its members and to make their voice be heard. Private music schools provide high-quality teaching and they need to defend this, as well as their interests, when they face public institutions. REEM offers schools to participate together in all processes that concern them.

Josep Jover

(Top of Page)

Graduated in Law from the University of Barcelona in 1982. He has lectured in numerous courses and Masters programs organised by the University, Barcelona County Council and the Barcelona Bar Association, among others.

He was the First President of the Information Technology Section of the Illustrious Bar Association and Member of the Cabinet Meeting of the Illustrious Bar Association of Barcelona.

He has published several articles on Information Technology and Telematic law.

Javier Candeira

(Top of page)

Javier Candeira (León, Spain, 1996) is a cultural researcher, journalist and educator in the intersection of technology, politics and art. He is a co-founder and editor of Barrapunto, the seminal Spanish website on Open Source and civil rights om the digital realm. He teaches the subject “Introducton to Free and Open Source software” in the masters program of the same name at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He is an active participant in the project to transpose the Creative Commons licenses to the Spanish legislation, and he is one of the organisers of both the Madrid and Melbourne chapters of Dorkbot, the international network of art and technology meetings for “people doing strange things with electricity”.

IT-Political Association

(Top of page)

IT-Political Association of Denmark is critical of the spillover from the controversies between the traditional content industry and people who engage in illegal copying into the rest of the IT area where most of the innovations happen in the digital age.

The purpose of the IT-Political Association of Denmark is to advocating free access to information and processing of information.

http://itpol.dk/presentation-of-it-pol

The Open Standards Alliance

(Top of page)

The Open Standards Alliance is a broad coalition of industry, public service, government, research organizations and private individuals focused on establishing fair and open markets predominantly in the Hungarian governmental and public service sectors.

http://www.openstandardsalliance.com/

ScriptumLibre

(Top of page)

ScriptumLibre (Vrijschrift in Dutch) creates awareness about the economic and social meaning of free knowledge and culture for our society. ScriptumLibre fulfills both a protecting and promoting role.

ScriptumLibre.org is the international branch of the Dutch Vrijschrift.org Foundation. On an international level we host the ‘Translation Project’ for Free Software and we were very active fighting the European software patent directive and IPRED.

http://vrijschrift.nl http://scriptumlibre.org/

David Hammerstein

(Volver arriba)

As Member of the European Parliament he was a full member of the powerful Committee of Industry, Energy and Research, as well on the Foreign Affairs and Petitions Committees. He has worked extensively on issues related to knowledge management, intellectual property and Internet governance. He has played a very important role in the parliamentary and social debates on copyright extension, IPRED 2 – criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights, the successful campaign against software patents, the defense of consumer rights in roaming phone rates, issues related to net neutrality, IP and privacy in the Telecom Package and Universal Services, the promotion of sharing and flows of knowledge in the EU´s Seventh Framework for Research, the patentability of life-forms and bio-piracy, science for green agriculture and issues concerning clean technology transfer to the South in the fight against climate change, among other issues. He spearheaded the “Open Parliament” campaign to open the European Parliament to open-source software. He has published many articles, press releases and position papers concerning all of these questions.


Economies: New P2P models and sustainable distribution


Jeremy Rifkin (Videoconference)

(Top of Page)

Jeremy Rifkin (born 1945, Denver, Colorado), founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET) and creator of the Third Industrial Revolution (TIR), is an American economist, writer, public speaker and activist who seeks to shape public policy in the United States and globally.

He advised the government of France during its presidency of the European Union (July 1 to December 31, 2008). Rifkin also served as an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of government, including Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Rifkin has testified before numerous congressional committees and has engaged in litigation extensively to ensure “responsible” government policies on a variety of environmental, scientific and technology related issues. Since 1994, Rifkin has been a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Executive Education Program, lecturing CEOs and senior corporate management from around the world on new trends in science and technology.

John Howkins

(Top of Page)

John Howkins first published his ideas on creativity and innovation in ‘The Creative Economy’ in 2001. His new book, ‘Creative Ecologies: Where Thinking is a Proper Job’ will be published in Spring 2009.

He is Chairman of BOP Consultants and has advised global corporations, international organisations, governments, and individuals. He has worked in over 30 countries including Australia, Canada, China, France, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Singapore, UK and USA. One of his major interests is the use of intellectual property laws to support the creative economy. He is the Director of the Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property. He devised the London Intellectual Property Advisory Service now called Own It. His business career has been spent in TV, film, digital media and publishing. He is a Director of HandMade plc, a films and rights owner listed on London’s AIM market, and Hotbed Media Ltd. He was associated with HBO and Time Warner from 1982 to 1996 with responsibilities for TV and broadcast businesses in Europe. He is Deputy Chairman of the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC). He is a Member of the United Nations UNDP Advisory Committee on the Creative Economy. He is a former Chairman of the London Film School and is a former Executive Director of the International Institute of Communications (IIC). He is Visiting Professor, Lincoln University, England, and Vice Dean and Visiting Professor, the Shanghai School of Creativity, Shanghai Theatre Academy, China. His books include ‘Understanding Television’ ‘Communications in China’ ‘New Technologies, New Policies’ ‘Four Global Scenarios for Information’ ‘CODE’ ‘The Creative Economy’

He has a BA in International Relations (Keele University) and a AA (Dip) in Urban Design (Architectural Association).

www.creativeeconomy.com

P2P Foundation / Michel Bauwens

(Top of Page)

The P2P Foundation functions as a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/P2P and commons-oriented initiatives. It aims to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives. Their political aims could be summarized under the following maxims:

1. ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);

2. promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc…).

Michel Bauwens is an active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation. He is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has been an analyst for the United States Information Agency, knowledge manager for British Petroleum, eBusiness Strategy Manager for Belgacom, as well as an internet entrepreneur in his home country of Belgium. He has co-produced the 3-hour TV documentary Technocalyps with Frank Theys, and co-edited the two-volume book on anthropology of digital society with Salvino Salvaggio. Michel currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand. In February 2009, he joined Dhurakij Pundit University’s International College as Lecturer, assisting with the development of the Asian Foresight Institute.”

http://p2pfoundation.net

Koleman Strumpf (via video conference)

(Top of Page)

Koleman Strumpf is Koch Professor of Economics at University of Kansas School of Business his research interests are in applied microeconomics with an emphasis on policy applications. His current work focuses on P2P file sharing, prediction markets (such as political wagering markets or sports betting), and the economics of criminal behavior in illegal sports bookmaking. He has also written papers on state and local economics (mainly on decentralization and the Tiebout model), health economics, and political economics.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Science, Economist, Business Week, Rolling Stone, and Variety. He has appeared on ABC News, Nightline, CNN, CNBC, C-Span, NPR, and Bloomberg Radio.

Joost Smiers

(Top of Page)

Joost Smiers is a leading expert on decision-making in cultural matters and new approaches to cultural and intellectual property. He is perhaps best known for his proposals to eliminate copyright and to break up large publishers, music producers, and movie studios in order to encourage cultural diversity and eliminate market dominance by a small number of corporations.

Smiers received his Ph.D.in Political Science in 1977 from the University of Amsterdam. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Political Science of the Arts and a Research Fellow in the Research Group Arts & Economics at the Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, where he served as Professor from 1985 until his retirement in 2007. He is Dutch and lives in Amsterdam. He speaks Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. He is a member of the AHRB Research Network on New Directions in Copyright Law, Birckbeck School of Law, University of London. He was a member of the board of trustees of ERICArts, the European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Affairs and the Arts, and an expert for the Council of Europe in Moldova.

Dmytri Kleiner

(Top of Page)

Dmytri Kleiner is a co-founder of Telekommunisten. Founded on the broad revolutionary possibilities introduced by the ability of individuals to interact instantly on a global scale, Telekommunisten promote the ideal of worker’s control of production as a means of class struggle.

Dmytri is currently working on the Telekommunist Manifesto to be published by the Institute of Network Cultures in December, 2009.

http://www.dmytri.info

Safe Creative

(Top of Page)

Safe Creative is a platform for the protection and self-management of Intellectual Property rights.

With Safe Creative we would like to collaborate in building the new knowledge scene in the global and digital world.

www.safecreative.org

Traficantes de Sueños

(Top of Page)

Traficantes de sueños was created as a space in which to meet and discuss the different realities of social movements, in order to try to widen their scope and contribute to enriching the debates, sensibilities and practices that are working to change the current state of things. To do this, they set up an associative bookshop and a publishing house that cooperates with alternative distribution networks.

Traficantes de sueños books are published with a Creative Commons copyleft licence.

www.traficantes.net

Platoniq

(Top of Page)

Platoniq: cultural co-operative system

Platoniq is a group of cultural producers, radio-makers and software developers who use their computer-technical knowledge and social interests to set up a number of independent community media projects such as Burnstation, Openserver or Bankofcommons Their main goal is to bring the Internet to the streets, drawing inspiration from diverse networking strategies to develop pilot group experiences and research in urban contexts.

Since 2003 Platoniq has collaborated with the Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture and over the last years they have been awarded two international prizes for their project Burn Station in the Transitio Festival in Mexico D.F. and the Transmediale festival of digital culture in Berlin. They are currently producing the project “Banco Común de Conocimientos” (Bank of common Knowledge), a space of collective action based on the transfer of knowledge and mutual education.

www.platoniq.net

Yproductions

(Top of Page)

Yproductions is a cultural production company that operates from Barcelona They have developed projects and worked on cultural production, management, research and education since 2003. They have worked on projects that are very different to each other, but that all share a common trait in that they are designed as a simultaneous research and production process. They believe in culture as a space where knowledge can be generated, and carry out on research through cultural work.

www.ypsite.net


Education and Access to Knowledge


Anne Ostergaard

(Top of Page)

Anne Østergaard holds a Law Degree from The University of Copenhagen. After a decade in government service, international organizations, and private enterprise she is presently an Libre Software entrepreneur. Anne is member of the GNOME Foundation.

As a Fellowship Member of FSFE Anne is working against the legalisation of software patents in Europe. Anne is also working for free and open standards and file formats, Libre Software in education, in the health care sector, and FLOSS as development aide, privacy on the Internet and more women active in the ICT sector.

Anne Østergaard’s interests lies in the area of the long-term strategic issues of Free Software in the social, legal, research, and economic area of our global society.- Information Communication Technologies are important to the individual citizen’s life and personal possibilities in the information society in order to obtain, and secure democratic freedom rights.

Students for Free Culture / Ben Moskowitz

(Top of Page)

Students for Free Culture, formerly known as FreeCulture.org, is an international student organization working to promote free culture ideals, such as cultural participation and access to information. It was inspired by the work of Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who wrote the book Free Culture, and it frequently collaborates with other prominent free culture NGOs, including Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. Students for Free Culture has over 30 chapters on college campuses around the world, and a history of grassroots activism.

Students for Free Culture is sometimes referred to as “FreeCulture,” “the Free Culture Movement,” and other variations on the “free culture” theme, but none of those are its official name. It is officially Students for Free Culture, as set for in the new bylaws that were ratified by its chapters on October 1, 2007, which changed its name from FreeCulture.org to Students for Free Culture.

http://freeculture.org

FLOSS Manuals

(Top of Page)

FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. At FLOSS Manuals you can find manuals for free and open source software like office applications, as well as web editing and browsing, and tools for playing, making, streaming and sharing audio and video.

The manuals on FLOSS Manuals are written by a community of people, who do a variety of things to keep the manuals as up to date and accurate as possible. Anyone can contribute to a manual – to fix a spelling mistake, to add a more detailed explanation, to write a new chapter, or to start a whole new manual. The way in which FLOSS Manuals are written mirrors the way in which FLOSS (Free, libre open source) software itself is written: by a community who contribute to and maintain the content.

We prefer not to translate manuals but to work towards establishing FLOSS Manuals language communities. This gives a greater chance that the manuals will be maintained and updated on a regular basis.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/

Communia

(Top of Page)

The COMMUNIA Thematic Network aims at becoming a European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussions around existing and emerging issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment. They also work on related topics, including, but not limited to, alternative forms of licensing for creative material, open access to scientific publications and research results and management of works by unknown authors (i.e. orphan works).

Funded by the European Commission within the eContentplus framework, the 3-year project expects to provide policy guidelines that will help all the stakeholders involved – public and private, from the local to the European and global level. COMMUNIA also plans to build strategic relationships with other non-European countries (starting with the United States and Brazil, where two COMMUNIA members are located) in which similar policy discussions are currently underway. COMMUNIA is coordinated by the Politecnico of Torino’s NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society. It started its activities on 1 September 2007 and will end on 31 August 2010.

http://www.communia-project.eu/

Kim Tucker

(Top of Page)

Kim Tucker is a researcher, writer, facilitator and catalyst interested in the global impact of technology and connected collaborative learning, and knowledge transfer across disciplines and divides. He promotes free software and “libre knowledge” emphasizing the freedoms of users of “libre resources” should enjoy to permit unrestrained social constructionist learning in the connected “copy modify mix and share” culture.

Free Knowledge Institute

(Top of Page)

The Free Knowledge Institute (FKI) is a non-profit organisation that fosters the free exchange of knowledge in all areas of society. Inspired by the Free Software movement, the FKI promotes freedom of use, modification, copying and distribution of knowledge in four different but highly related fields: education, technology, culture y science

www.freeknowledge.eu

Creative Commons España/ Ignasi Labastida

(Top of Page)

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyrightlicenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

Ignasi Labastida has a doctorate in Physics from the University of Barcelona, where he also works. Since 2003 he has led the Creative Commons Project in Catalonia and Spain. He is also member of Communia.

http://es.creativecommons.org/

ALQUA

(Top of Page)

Alqua is a free publishing house that has been in the loop of scientific content creation and dissemination since the year 2000. Alqua wants to liberate existing academic knowledge in book form, and to enable experts to concentrate on their writing. It does so by facilitating collaboration tools, a revision process, a set of style practices and an automated publishing system with high quality layout templates and proper handling of metadata for web publication.

Regarding authorship, Alqua is aligned with standard merit attribution systems and tries to make author contributions and responsibility visible, although it of course builds upon and accepts public domain contributions. In order to get the fruits of your work beyond the digital realm, Alqua offers a program to donate free books to public libraries. Several other exciting initiatives, including some exploring the cutting edge of content granularity and interactivity axes are waiting for your enthusiastic participation, either as a domain expert, a free software programmer or an activist for free culture and the right to access knowledge.

www.alqua.org

Epidemia / Pablo Ortellado (Brazil)

(Top of Page)

http://www.aepidemia.org

La Casa Invisible / Florencio Cabello

(Top of Page)

La Casa Invisible is a Self-Managed Social and Cultural Centre based in Malaga. Its goals are to promote grassroots self-organisation, as well as critical thought and collective creation.

Florencio Cabello is a lecturer at the University of Malaga. In February 2008, he set up a project with his Communication Techonology students that involved analysing and preparing the Spanish language edition of the Lawrence Lessig book: Codev2.

The result of this work was published by Traficantes de Sueños in May 2009.

Universidad Nómada

(Top of Page)

Since 2000, Universidad Nómada constitutes an anticapitalist, antiracist, decolonial and feminist laboratory for organising production and theoretical and intellectual transmission.

www.universidadnomada.net


Free Software and Open Standards: Knowledge Sharing, Hacker Philosophy and Tools for Action


Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education/Nagarjuna G. (Videoconference)

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Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) is a National Centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. The broad goals of the Centre are to promote equity and excellence in science and mathematics education from primary school to undergraduate college level, and encourage the growth of scientific literacy in the country. To these ends it carries out a wide spectrum of inter-related activities, which may be viewed under three broad categories:

(a) Research and Development

(b)Teacher Orientation and Science Popularisation

(c) Olympiads and other Students’ Nurture Programmes.

Nagarjuna G. : I am broadly interested in understanding the nature of knowledge (epistemology, knowledge organization, biological roots of cognition, and education), nature of life and evolution. This interest is executed in the respective domains: Information Technology, History and Philosophy of Science, and Biology Education. The social, economic and political aspects of information technology also engage my serious attention.

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) / Alberto Barrionuevo – Roberto Santos

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The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to establishing a free market in information technology, through the removal of barriers to competition. The FFII was largely responsible for the rejection of the EU software patent directive in July 2005, working closely with the European Parliament and many partners from industry and civil society. CNET awarded the FFII its award for outstanding contributions to software development for this project which was the result of years of research, policy, and action. Today the FFII continues to defend your right to a free and competitive software market by working towards sane patent systems and open standards.

Alberto Barrionuevo

In the lead-up to the European guidelines on software patents, Alberto Barrioneuvo, an opensource software and interoperability entrepreneur, coordinated the University Mobilisation against Software Patents and also took the voice of thousands of Spanish groups and individuals against the patentability of software to the European Parliament. He then co-founded and co-directed campaigns and projects such as EstandardesAbiertos.org, NoOOXML.org, OpenXML.info and Devolucion.org, among others. His current extra-professional activities are more focused on the economic aspects of opensource software, as president of AndaLibre and member of ASOLIF, which represent the opensource software sector in Andalucia and Spain, respectively.

www.ffii.org

Dyne / Jaromil

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Dyne.org is a non-profit effort lead by a grassroot committee of hackers dedicated to the development of free and open source software for the freedom of expression.

Jaromil is a developer and media artist inspired by the GNU free software movement, a public figure among the dyne.org developers. Starting from the year 2000 with RASTASOFT he developed the dyne:bolic GNU/Linux 100% free operating system and various multimedia applications as HasciiCam, MuSE and FreeJ, for running ascii video streams, web radios and video shows. For his efforts “to overcome existing restrictions and borders, whether economic, social or scientific” he received the the Vilm Flusser Award in 2009.

Currently based in Amsterdam, Jaromil is active on free and open source R&D in media art for the NIMK.

http://dyne.org

Margarita Padilla

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An IT engineer and former director of the magazine Mundo Linux, Margarita Padilla is one of that small minority of women who can create and maintain systems. She learnt GNU/Linux and the social and political uses of new technology in squatted social centres. Something she wasn’t taught at university. Together with other hackers she founded Sindominio.net. She has broadcast on Internet radio through Radiopwd, a station run by a group of women from the hacklab in Lavapiés (Madrid), and she has published numerous articles on political action and on new communications technology, including “Agujeros negros en la red”, in the journal Archipelago, “Penélope tejiendo y destejiendo la red” in the book Ciberguerilla de la comunicaciçon published by Virus, and other texts on the Intenet. She currently Works in Dabne, a work cooperative made up of women and dedicated to the development of web applications based on opensource software, although she likes to say that her work consists of “making Internet”.

Text from Medialab Prado

Guifi

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guifi.net is a telecommunication network, an open, free, neutral network organised through a peer agreement in which each participant provides a section that connects with the other participants so that everyone has connectivity.

www.guifi.net

Isaac Hacksimov

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I was born in Patio Maravillas (a squatted social centre in Madrid) at some undetermined moment in 2008, according to the log of the internal server at HamLab Maravillas, located in the small lab room, just behind the toilet. Thus I was born, in the promiscuous romp that came from the enthusiasm of a new liberated space in an ancient metrópolis. I am a direct descendent of Isaac Asimov and Luther Blisset, greatgrandson of Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and first cousin of Teresa Malina and Wau Holland. I am a collective identity, the assembly of bodies and machines of the hacktivist lab HamLab, a narration with many voices and a single name. I am Isaac Hacksimov, and this is my reticulum vitae.

http://patiomaravillas.net/hamlab/


Organizational Logic and Political Implications of Free Culture


David Bollier

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Bollier is an independent policy strategist, journalist and activist who focuses on the politics, economics and culture of the commons. He regularly writes about digital technologies and the fight against the abuses of intellectual property legislation, and how they are transforming democratic culture. Bollier is the author of Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own, among many other books. He is editor of the web portal and blog OntheCommons.org, co-founder and board member of Public Knowledge; and Senior Fellow, the Norman at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication.

www.bollier.org

Hilary Wainwright

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Hilary Wainwright is Research Director of the New Politics Programme at the Transnational Institute and editor of Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine. She is also Senior Research Associate at the International Centre for Participation Studies at the Department for Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK, and an Honorary Fellow in Sociology at Manchester University, UK. Her books include Reclaim the State: Adventures in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) and Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993). She has written for The Guardian, The Nation, New Statesman, Open Democracy, Carta, Il Manifesto and El Viejo Topo, as well as appearing as a commentator on BBC1, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. She has been a Senior Research Fellow at the International Labour Studies Centre, University of Manchester; a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, at Durham University and at the Open University, UK; Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Visiting Scholar at the Havens Center, Univesity of Wisconsin, Madison and at Todai University, Tokyo. Wainwright also founded the Popular Planning Unit of the Greater London Council during the Thatcher years, and was convenor of the new economics working group of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly from 1989 to 1994. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Huddersfield, UK in 2007.

Felix Stalder

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Felix Stalder currently divides his working time between teaching media economy at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich (New Media Department) and working as an independent researcher/organizer with groups such as the Institute for New Cultural Technologies (t0) in Vienna and the research unit of Openflows in New York.

This site serves primarily as a repository for his publications. Most of them focus on the intersection of technological, cultural, social, political and economic dynamics with a special interest on how they affect individual freedoms. In recent years, issues of access to information and freedom of cultural creation have emerged as key issues in this area. Art and its practices are central here. Felix Stalder has been working in this area since the mid 1990s. At the end of the 90s, he was pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto (finished in 2001), then as a post-doc with the Surveillance Project, a transdisciplinary research initiative based in the Department of Sociology,Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada (completed in 2002). Since 2003, he is a (part-time) faculty member in Zurich. These issues feature prominently in some conferences that he has co-organised, most recently “OpenCultures: Free Flows of Information and the Politics of the Commons” (Vienna, June 5&6, 2003), the Freebitflows Conference (Vienna, June 3&4, 2004), the Wizards-of-OS (June 9-11, 2004, Sept. 14-16, 2006), and the World-Information City, Bangalore (Nov. 14-20, 2005). He is also kept busy with the nettime mailing list which he has been co-moderating for the last couple of years and a new project: kunstfreiheit.ch (freedom of arts).

http://felix.openflows.com/

David Evan Harris

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David Evan Harris is Executive Director of the Global Lives Project and Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future. David holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of São Paulo and a B.A. in 2003 from UC Berkeley, where he created his own major in “political economy of development and environment.” In college David took part in the International Honors Program, where he spent eight months traveling and studying in Tanzania, India, the Philippines, Mexico, and the UK. In 2000, he held an internship at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and has since worked as a consultant to numerous non-profit and educational organizations in the US and Brazil. In Brazil, David wrote and directed newscasts for CurrentTV: http://deharris.blogspot.com/2007/05/video-outdoor-advertising-banned-in-so.html.

His writings and photographs have been published in print and online with the BBC, with Adbusters, with the Sarai Reader, with Glimpse Magazine, with Next American City, with Focus on the Global South, with Alternet and with Grist

David’s written work has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Chinese. David speaks fluent English, Portuguese and Spanish and intermediate French.

http://globallives.org/

http://www.iftf.org/

Jamie King

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Jamie King is the director of STEAL THIS FILM I and II, documentaries about the future of intellectual property that have been downloaded millions of times.

King is a film maker, writer and activist working enthusiastically in the area of new media, post-IP culture and social organisation. A former editor of Mute Magazine, lobbyist at the UN, journalist at ITN News, and consultant for Channel 4 Television, Jamie is now focused on radical approaches to sharing, exchange and co-operation indicated by network technologies across a variety of media. His current project is VODO, a means of helping creators promote and spread their works while receiving payment through a system of voluntary supportive donations.

http://blog.vodo.net

Networked Politics / Mayo Fuster

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Networked Politics is an inquiry into decentralized and horizontal forms of organization from the perspective of new ways of organizing for social change. These examine social movements, including their development of new forms of knowledge and organization; progressive political parties, and attempts to bring about transformative forms of political representation; the dangers and opportunities facing the development of political institutions in a network society; and the potential of new techno-political tools for facilitating and reconceiving political organization. The Networked Politics research started in 2006 and since then it has been carried out by the collaboration of diverse organizations and individuals around the planet working on related issues. In the process several seminars tool place (Porto Alegre, Nairobi, Bologna, Manchester, Barcelona, Berlin, Berkeley, and Belem do Para). In last December 2008, I was the coordinator of an international seminar hosted at the School of information – UC Berkeley centered on the questions of: Governance of platforms for participation; new social media and political activism; and the commons as institutions.

http://www.networked-politics.info/

Mayo Fuster Morell is promotor of Networked Politics Collaborative research (http://www.networked-politics.info) and developes techno-political tools at the frame of the Communication Commission of the World Social Forum and European Social Forum (http://fse-esf.org). Currently Mayo is finishing a doctoral research on “The Governance of platforms of participation for the building of digital commons” at the European University Institute. She explores the democratic logic of the Internet in knowledge-making processes and the relationship between governance model and community growth. She compares World Social Forum, Flickr and Wikipedia governance models (http://www.onlinecreation.info). Last year she was visiting researcher at the School of Information – UC Berkeley and provided teaching assistance at the Communication Department – Stanford University. She co-wrote the books “Rethinking political organisation in an age of movements and networks” (XL Editorial: Rome 2007); “Activist research and social movements” (Spanish) (El Viejo Topo: Barcelona 2005); and “Guide for social transformation of Catalonia” (Catalan) (Edicions Col.lectives: Barcelona 2003). Mayo is co-founder of the Infoespai at Barcelona (http://www.infoespai.org).

Vittorio Bertola

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Vittorio Bertola, from Turin, Italy, born in 1974, engineer, deals with the Internet in all its aspects, including technical, business, social and political matters, as an entrepreneur, writer, activist and software developer.

While working as a freelance consultant in policy and technical projects, he is a founding partner in Dynamic Fun, an innovative company in the field of wireless services, and in Glomera, an Internet television platform. He was previously one of the promoters of Vitaminic, one of the most successful “dot com” companies in Italy, as its Vice President for Technology.

He is often busy as a conference speaker, blogger and writer; he has also been dealing for many years with Internet policies at the national and international level. He was a member of the United Nations’ Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), and of the Internet Governance Consulting Committee of the Italian government. He was one of the inventors of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), where he coordinated the civil society caucus and organized the Internet Bill of Rights campaign. He represented the global Internet users in the Board of ICANN, the global policy-making entity for Internet domain names, and is a member of several other boards in the Internet policy field. Over the last ten years, he has been the promoter of a number of online initiatives, which made him a well known figure on the Italian and global Internet.

In his home town, he is among the promoters of the civic movement Torino a 5 Stelle, which experiments new forms of participatory democracy in Italian politics. For this movement, in 2009 he was the candidate to the post of President of the Province of Turin, a public institution managing a territory with 2′300′000 inhabitants.

Joan Subirats

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Joan Subirats has a PhD in Economics. He is a Professor of Political Science and Director of IGOP at the UAB. He is an specialist in public policy and public management, and also in political participation. He is regularly involved in different media activities. He is very much interested in issues of social and political innovation, but with a specially focused in education and social policies and in new opportunities for political participation. Last books: Educació i Govern Local (CEAC, Barcelona, 2001) (Premi Josep Pallach, 2000) (traducció al castellà a Ariel: Gobierno Local y Educación, Barcelona, 2002); Redes, Territorios y Gobiernos (Diputación de Barcelona, 2002); Veinte años de Comunidades Autónomas en España. Instituciones, Políticas y Opinión Pública, CIS, Madrid, 2002 (Premi de la “Asociación Española de Ciencia Política al mejor libro de Ciencia Política”, any 2003); Els Régims Autonòmics de Benestar, Institut d’Estudis Autonòmics, Barcelona, 2002; Elementos de nueva política, CCCB, Barcelona, 2003; Més enllà de l’escola. Transformacions socials i noves dinàmiques educatives i professionals, Editorial Mediterrània-Fundació Jaume Bofill, 2003; Un paso más hacia la inclusión social. Generación de conocimiento, políticas y prácticas para la inclusión social, Plataforma de ONGs de Acción Social, Madrid, 2004; Pobreza y Exclusión Social. Un análisis de la realidad española y europea, Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona, 2004

Marco Berlinguer

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Marco Berlinguer was born and lives in Rome. In the last years he contributed to the foundation of Transform! Italia and of different European and International networks as: Transform! Europe; Euromovements; Eurotopia; The Network for the Charter for Another Europe, Newtorked Politics, Labor and Globalization. He is mainly engaged in studying and experimenting new forms of connection between social and political action and research; and between new forms of production of information, knowledge and communication and the production of new forms of alternative and trasformative subjectivity. In the last years he edited: “World Social forum: A Debate On the Challenges for Its Future” (2003); “La Riva sinistra del Tevere – Mappe e conflitti nel territorio metropolitano di Roma” (2004); “Pratiche costituenti – Spazi, reti, appartenenze: le politiche dei movimenti” (2005); “Parole di una nuova politica” (2007); “Networked Politics” (2007). Contact: marco.berlinguer (at) transform.it

Exit

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EXIT stands for Experimentar, inventar, transformar (to experiment, to invent, to tranform). EXIT is a Social Center placed in C/Sant Martí 11, 08001, Raval BCN. Exit has two main projects: on one hand the social rigths office, on the other hand the autoformation project.

The Social Rights Office is involved in a longer network which works inmigration and housing topics. The last course this network impulsed “La campaña por la despenalización del top manta” (Top Manta’s despenalization campaign). This campaign is still on. It’s a reaction caused by the hard law against cd and dvd streetsellers. By now, 50 or 60 of those streetsellers are in jail. The main goal of our campaign is to stop detentions and criminalisation of streetsellers. Further the campaign, we claim for a new global citizenship status and freedom of movement for everybody.

The EXIT Social Rights Office participates as well in the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca. (Impossible to pay mortgage platform). We want to contribute to build up a fair and no especulative housing system acces based on cooperatives or Andel like system.

The autoformation project is a critique of the current university system. We talk about “situated knowledge”. We think research and production of knowledge must be used in order to transform society. Poscoloniality, Cognitive Capitalism (University, Intellectual Property, Culture and art) Gentrification, Basic Income, Feminisms or Biopower are some of the topics that we discuss through seminars or discussion groups. We think in autoformation as a way of social organization and production of debate from below. Universidad Nómada (www.universidadnomada.net) and EXIT are two different legs of the same body. The last year we worked together in the organisation of BCN marca copyleft (bcn copyleft trademark), a cycle of seminars around the question of intellectual property. This seminar was a part of the first Semana de los OXCARS.

www.exit-raval.net

Conservas

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Art, politics and excesses. Conservas is not a cultural placebo. Justice and quality.

http://conservas.tk

Jack J. Marxer

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Member of the Free Software Foundation Europe

Mario Pena

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Mario Pena is an activist who has participated in several initiatives to defend free access to culture and civil rights in the Internet. Currently is new business model analist for digital media and works as community and business manager for an international authorship rights company.

He writes at http://www.ningunterra.com.

Toni Verger

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Has a PhD in Sociology, awarded by the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. He is currently a lecturer and researcher on International Development at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests are the relationship between education, knowledge production and development, and the role of international organizations in the low-income countries education field http://educationanddevelopment.wordpress.com

Ignacio de Castro Arribas

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Is an economist and blogger, interested in the economics of information, culture, knowledge and intelligence.

http://golpedee-estado.blogspot.com/

Maria Claudia de Azevedo Borges

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Clinic Psychologist, Painter and Media Researcher.

CSDVA

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Center for Synergy of Digital and Visual Arts – Croatian NGO for promoting new media arts; running workshops for students based on learning FLOSS

http://upgrade.wowm.org