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Download here the document in .pdf format

This document is a synthesis of FCForum as a case study and recommendations.

(all the videos linked are in spanish)

  • 1. WHAT THE INTERNET HAS DONE FOR US, AND WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE INTERNET<

1.1 John Perry Barlow: Fifteen years since the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
1.2 Richard Stallman: Free Software for a Free Society
1.3 #REDADA: The State of Affairs in Relation to Internet Rights in Spain, 2011
1.4 European legislation ACTA and the answer of civil society STOP ACTA

  • 2.TOOLS FOR COOMUNICATION, SEL-ORGANISATION AND DEFENSE IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE #GLOBALREVOLUTION

2.1 X.net y Communia.org: Intro. Why the Internet and new tools have been the driving force behind the Indignados’s movement
2.2 Lorea, N-1 y RedDry: Infrastructure for the self-organisation of networks and movements
2.3 15Hack, aLabs y Comunes: strategies and tools: collective and communicative action

  • 3. SUSTANAIBLE MODELS FOR CREATIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: BACKGROUND AND CASE STUDIES

3.1 Films on the Internet.. What is the situation in Spain today? – With Francisco George amb Alex de la Iglesia, Juan Carlos Tous, Amparo Peiró, Eudald Domènech i Josep Jover
3.2 YProductions: Companies of the Commons
3.3 Jesús Encinar: Startups in Spain
3.4 Kayros Transmedia:Scriptwriters’ cooperative
3.5 Daniel Granados (Producciones Doradas): Something better than Spotify?
3.6 Kollector: Tracking broadcasts for a fair distribution of royalties.
3.7 Microcredits and Crowdfunding platforms : Verkami, Flattr, Goteo
3.8 Communiqué on the Crisis Affecting the SGAE and Copyright. Lluis Cabrera

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1. WHAT THE INTERNET HAS DONE FOR US, AND WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE INTERNET

1.1 John Perry Barlow: Fifteen years since the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. [VIDEO]

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“They tell us we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those52 who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself.” Slavoj Zizek AT Occupy Wall Street

Barlow discovered the Internet in 1985, and realised that he was witnessing the birth of the nervous system of a new paradigm of thought. Since then, he has done everything he can to ensure that it remains open and impossible to fence in. In 1989, Barlow was part of The Legion of Doom, a group of hackers who were trying to create their own internet. In 1996, he wrote the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace to defend the Internet from the regulations that attempted to encroach on its open nature.

  • We are in the midst of a profound, long-term change that has been picking up speed over the past few months. The turning point was the 60s, when people began questioning the existence of a divine power and the legitimacy of vertical structures. This heralded the end of monotheism, and opened up the way for the emergence of pantheism based on horizontal, collective relationships.
  • There is a new social force, which knows where we are going and where we no longer want to be. A force that has spontaneously awakened in response to the terror of the present, because “you can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep”
  • The design of the architecture of the Internet is a political issue because it defines what can and can’t be done. Barlow acknowledged the contributions of people such as Paul Baran, and his switched network design, which makes the horizontal architecture of the Net possible. The demands made by defenders of the Internet in the early days are the same demands that we make now: access to information and to knowledge must be treated as a basic human right.
  • Big corporations see copyright as a way of perpetuating vertical monotheism. They know they are wrong, but for them it is a divine principle or an article of faith.

“Inventions cannot, in nature, be a subject of property” Thomas Jefferson, 19th century

1.2 Richard Stallman: Free Software for a Free Society [VIDEO]

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In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in response to the lack of freedom of users, who – unaware of the dangers – use proprietary software and come under the abusive power of its developers. The idea is to create self-managed communities, which generate their own code. Users who do not know how to programme can participate in the community alongside the user/programmers to develop ideas and new free/libre applications, and to ensure that these respect the freedom of all users.

Privately owned software usually has malicious functionalities: surveillance, restrictions (digital handcuffs) and backdoors.

  • Amazon’s Kindle has all three; it can even delete books by remote control, as it did – with almost poetic symbolism – when it deleted Orwell’s 1984.
  • – Apple products follow the same logic; for example, at Apple Store, the company approves new applications and imposes strict censorship.
  • With free/libre software, nobody has power over anybody else: all users are free.
  • Sharing is good, and it should be legal. But some companies, in coalition with some governments, want to impose an anti-sharing regime. Spain’s proposed Sustainable Economy Legislation, known as the “Sinde” Law: it attacks fundamental rights in order to block the possibility of sharing. Its is unfair in its aims as well as its methods, which are based on a predatory attitude and unfair principles that are being applied in many other spheres, including the biosphere.
  • The US government gave another example of freedom under threat in its attacks on Wikileaks: bypassing due legal process, given that there were no accusations, pressure was put on the companies that provided Internet services to Wikileaks. This is an example of the vulnerable position of Internet users and their lack of legal protection vis a vis government and/or private interests.
  • Stallman proposed using votes as a political tool to bring about change: “in the current context, the only way to change a law is to replace the politicians with others who will vote to remove that law. So vote for parties that are against the “Sinde” Law.

1.3 #REDADA: The State of Affairs in Relation to Internet Rights in Spain, 2011

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Antonio Delgado David Bravo, Isaac Hacksimov y José Luis de Vicente [VIDEO]

Contributions to the session on current problems:

  • Two myths fell this year (1) “Internet users are incapable of taking to the streets.” The distributed mobilisations that sprung up throughout the net have blown this myth wide open. In Spain, 65% of the population is connected to the Internet, so (2) the formulation “Internet Users vs Society” is meaningless: we are all Internet users.

  • Spain is the only country that does not have freedom of information legislation that allows citizens to consult and use the data generated by government bodies. This ties into the democratic shortcomings pointed out by the Indignados’s movement movement, given that the lack of transparency laws limit the capacities of the social body. The government must be required to respond to citizen requests, but beyond that, it must also enable citizens to access information sources via readable architectures and formats (XML). In Spain, the Autonomous Community governments of Extremadura and the Basque Country have implemented Open Data measures.

  • The introduction of this law is not in itself a panacea. It would also have to be enforced, and it only makes sense if citizens exercise it by building up a strong culture based on data use, a culture based on the monitoring and critical analysis of the activities of the public administration.

  • Network neutrality is a key issue. ISPs today are trying to control traffic according to commercial agreements with private corporations.

  • In the 1970s-90s, public space in Spain was privatised, which is why companies like Nokia can present their products in Plaza 2 de Mayo (Madrid), but citizens cannot hold assemblies in public squares. With the Internet, we have the chance to prevent the same thing from happening, instead of taking action when it is already fenced in. We can stop the Internet becoming another TV.

  • The Internet is infinite in its extension. No matter how many fences they put up, there will always be tunnels and ways of reaching or providing access to content. The important thing is to break down the digital divide and teach people how to connect to secure DNS, for example, or how to avoid letting companies like Telefónica monitor our online activity.

  • In Spain, governments have chosen to criminalize users. Users are not presumed to be innocent, either by the media (with their constant use of the term “pirates”) or by criminal proceedings. In the raid against websites that linked to content on P2P networks (2006), the judgement passed by the media would have us think that cases which currently have a stay of proceedings, and may never even reach trial, were criminal behaviour.

  • In Spain’s penal law, a crime is only considered to have been committed if a for-profit web page publicly publishes copyrighted content. For-profit pages that link to content do exist, but they do not publicly publish content, they simply provide access to the download links. Under the “Sinde” Law, the legality of each case would be decided by an administrative committee, which is not made up of legal professionals. This measure has been included due to the pressure of the industry lobbies, who want to avoid court rulings.

  • The attack on downoad index pages (such as lists of links) has no effect on the circulation of content. David Bravo’s #tablasinde experiment showed just how quickly an index page of links can be created: in less than two hours, 20 pages of links were created. The “Sinde law” disobedience handbook contains formulas that prove the limits and the uselessness of the legislation.

  • We need formulas and mechanisms that provide financial support to activist projects, without having to deal with large financial institutions. Right now, Flattr and bitcoin are the only platforms that allows people to donate to Wikileaks.

1.4 La legislació europea ACTA i la resposta de la societat civil STOP ACTA

Jeremy Zimmerman, La Quadrature du Net i Geraldine Juárez

La Quadrature du Net [VIDEO]

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The Internet is the infrastructure of the global movement. The reason that it is such a powerful tool is its universal nature, that is, it provides the same access to the same information and the same capacity for transmission anywhere in the world. This characteristic is what we call Network Neutrality. There must be laws that guarantee this neutrality and prevent operators from interfering with it. A restriction at any point in the net, is a restriction on the net as a whole. These restrictions can take many forms: the machines at each node can be programmed by companies such as Vodaphone or governments of countries like China, and, as we know, restrictions can also be made in the name of Copyright. Over the past ten years, organisations like WIPO and their imperatives based on intellectual property legislation have been delegitimized by governments from countries like Brazil, which have decided that sharing is important for their social and economic growth. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA, video Say NO to ACTA) better known in the social movements as the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement. These regulations have been negotiated without the participation of civil society. They aim to legislate the Internet in the name of the interests of the patent and copyright industries. ACTA includes criminal sanctions and provides corporations with the power to condemn independently of the processes of representative politics. It is due to be presented before the European Parliament in the coming months (February 2012), but the battle has not been lost. Because we know that sharing is good in the moral and ethical sense, but also economically and technically.

Geraldine Juárez [VIDEO]

In Mexico, the political context that made possible to question ACTA was created through blogs social networks and the support of professionals (militant lawyers). Reports were written up comparing the contents of ACTA with restrictions on civil rights. The report was supported by Senator Castellón, who asked the Instituto Mejicano de la Propiedad Intelectual (Mexican Intellectual Property Institute, IMPI) to justify the negotiation of those criminal sanctions through ACTA. The director of the IMPI was dismissed from his post. Several senators formed a working group to evaluate ACTA in collaboration with corporations, lawyers, activists, citizens, etc. The arguments put forward by civil society proved them to be the most knowledgeable about the report, and showed that there was a true grassroots interest. This group released a memorandum that said ACTA would NOT be accepted in Mexico, because it attacks freedom of expression, threatens the right to privacy of individuals, and because the negotiations for ACTA failed to comply with the economy treaty in Mexico. For the moment, the Senate will not sign ACTA in the current term. This was not a systematically organised struggle – people with shared objectives and different levels of participation came together to create an open, public and well-positioned discourse. Europe can go through a similar process. Mexico’s STOP ACTA campaign has proven that it is possible.

2. TOOLS FOR COOMUNICATION, SEL-ORGANISATION AND DEFENSE IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE #GLOBALREVOLUTION

2.1 X.net y Communia.org: Intro. Why the Internet and new tools have been the driving force behind the Indignados’s movement

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  • No matter how much the media try to push the idea, the Indignados’s movement movement did not just spontaneously appear out of nowhere. It grew and matured along a path of campaigns and practices such as Democracia Real Ya, the Manifesto for Rights on the Internet, Red SOStenible #nolesvotes, the whole movement against the “Sinde” Law, jóvenes sin futuro, etc.
  • Indignados’s movement is an open source process that is transmitted and recorded in real time. It demands transparency and puts it into practice. It is a free and reproducible process, and in this sense it does not only draw inspiration from free/libree software, but also models itself on it.
  • In Spain, like in the uprisings in Egypt and the Arabic world, the Internet has been crucial in allowing the revolutions to be decentralised.
  • To reinforce this and optimise the movement, several techno-political mechanisms have been set in motion. These include n-1, DRY, Lorea, take the square, etc.
  • Specific projects being developed outside of the media spotlight have led to a dizzyingly fast collective learning, using community online tools to self-organise (PADs, drupal, etc.)
  • Individuality has been broken down. The movement has constructed collective moods, collectivising conflicts that used to be experienced individually.
  • The use of the Internet does more than just allow for rhizomic forms of counterinformation and self-organisation, and more than just leave economic and political powers bewildered by the end of the univocity of their messages – of their monologues – in the face of the real-time dissolution of the impunity of their decisions aimed at perpetrating power and their own interests. Rather, the people – through the Net and like the Net – are dialectically putting an end to the fragmentation of ideas of change and the endogamy of groups; setting up a new ethical system that recognises the merits and skills of each person and allows them to mature and become autonomous; and normalising forms of organisation that are based on decentralised power, the empowerment of the end user and the shared distribution of resources.

2.2 Lorea, N-1 i RedDry: Infrastructure for the self-organisation of networks and movements [VIDEO]

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  • The basic aim of Lorea, n-1, and RedDry is to create free, federated, self-managed social networks. Social networks for the people who work on them.
  • Lorea aims to become a network of federated networks, “a garden of shared knowledge.” It wants to continue the free software philosophy in the area of services on Web 2.0, which has been dominated by proprietary software and platforms that trade in our personal data. Lorea is developed with w3c standards.
  • The logic of federation, which has always allowed services like e-mail to work for all users regardless of proprietary issues, falls apart in social network services. Artificial networks have been created in an attempt to secure user loyalty in specific contexts, restricting users’ freedom to relate across networks. Federated, free networks created by the commons break free of that logic.
  • The paradox of privacy: we want to control our privacy levels, but we sign terms of use without knowing how they affect us. At Lorea, the data flows that we generate belong to all of us. On the other hand, we work with encryption that offers users secure access, Administrators cannot access the information generated by the flow of relationships on the networks. “Digital suicide” is always available so that users can immediately delete their details. These free, federated networks do not engage in data mining, and do not monitor users.
  • n-1 has grown from 3,000 users to more than 35,000 users.
  • Its architecture is designed to generate groups that share tools and to work collaboratively (rather than to accumulate friends). The focus is not on creating autonomy but on technological sovereignty, as in fair trade networks. A varied technological ecosystem that generates sustainability.
  • We are not a company and we do not have a business plan. We want to promote the “Do-It-Together” philosophy, although we would obviously like to attain economic sustainability for the people who work on Lorea and we try to secure resources so that more people can devote more time to it, in order to speed up development.

2.3 15Hack, aLabs and Comunes: strategies and tools: collective and communicative action [VIDEO] [VIDEO2]

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15Hack is a hacker group that develops open, self-managed tools for the digital revolution. In their presentation, they contextualised the role of free culture and free/ software in the early days of the Indignados’s movement and in the current #globalrevolution.

  • The idea is to develop tools that can contaminate and allow people to join forces. We follow the spirit of the Indignados’s movement and turn our backs on the culture of seizing power. When it comes to responding to requests, we are guided by the idea that “if it uses free software, the answer can be yes”.
  • Using the questiontoanswer code questiontoanswer they designed propongo, a platform designed to meet the desire to set up ongoing assemblies.
  • The power of the movement lies in distributed production. From the Basque Country, they launched http://plazan.net a node that can respond to local requests.
  • In the first interacampadas or national assembly, they were joined by more hackers who helped to manage the flow of information, servers, thousands of daily e-mails, etc. The hacker community needs more resources and volunteers! Communication takes place through mailing lists, N-1 and Mumble (an open source, cross-platform voice over IP application with flexible administration – mumble
  • They used the http://ushahidi.com, code, which can be used to report alerts and visualise conflicts, to developed www.stopdesahucios.es, a social website for people unable to meet their mortgage repayments. A highly useful tool that offers the PAH platform (Plataforma Afectados por la Hipoteca) a detailed vision of this dramatic situation.

ALabs is an association that generates open source software applications and releases the code under a GNU Affero GPL v3. They presented some of the projects they have developed, such as:

  • Oiga.me, An online citizen mobilisation platform that draws attention to social conflicts and causes, and allows users to express their support. During the presentation, the first campaign was approved: Dile a la Junta electoral que #tururu. Other open source platforms such as Actuable and Change.org that have been developed, but they have not released their code. These entities have investors and shareholders. Code available at https://github.com/alabs/oigame.
  • Oiga.me is based on xmailer, an application that allows users to fill in a form and send an e-mail to lists of recipients as part of different campaigns. It was used in campaigns such as Blackout Europe in which a million e-mails were sent to European Members of Parliament. It was also used in the campaign against the “Sinde” Law, when the mobile devices of several Members of Parliament were (accidentally)

Comunes is a non-profit collective that aims to enable and simplify the work of other collectives and activists through the development of free online tools and resources, in order to reinforce the commons. It develops projects such as:

  • Move commons, a tool that connects volunteers and collectives, so that people who want to help can find out exactly where to do so. Social initiatives and collectives declare their principles through a series of icons (eg is it for-profit? is it horizontal?) displayed on the website. These icons also make it easier for search engines to trace and find them, grouped with similar initiatives. This means that collectives and volunteers can find communities that share their interests and work in defense of the commons.
  • Created in 2002, Ourproject is a tool that facilitates collaborative work among individuals who want to share ideas and solve problems together. It offers a virtual space and a series of online tools for social/cultural/political/artistic projects that must licence their contents under Creative Commons licences. Their aim is to spread the ideas and methodologies of free/libre software into other social areas, promoting free culture. But there are usability issues – as in some other free software projects – because it requires a certain level of technical knowledge.
  • Kune is a collaborative, decentralised social network. It aims to free collectives and activists from the need to depend on commercial online services and technical experts. Kune fits out easy-to-understand, user-friendly virtual spaces where individuals, groups and organisations can carry out all their online activities: internal organisation, online meetings and coordination, collaborative simultaneous drafting of documents, event planning, one-on-one and group communication, social network and online content publishing.

3. SUSTANAIBLE MODELS FOR CREATIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: BACKGROUND AND CASE STUDIES

3.1 Films on the Internet.. What is the situation in Spain today? [VIDEO]

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Francisco George Alex de la Iglesia, Juan Carlos Tous, Amparo Peiró, Eudald Domènech y Josep Jover

Contributions to the session on the current problems.

  • It is generally acknowledged that there is a need for a change of mentality, a cultural change that can allow us to deal with the conflicts between social uses of online media and industry interests. The 15# movement has identified many of the keys of this change: non-hierarchical discussions, politics that are not based on representation and delegation, collective production to encourage benefits for all, instead of predatory practices, etc.
  • In this session there was a discussion of the practices of communities such as ‘The Scene’, which distribute copyrighted cultural products (film, television, videogames) and introduce content on P2P networks. Some members of these communities are there “for the love of it” and others participate with the aim of gaining financial profit. ‘The Scene’ has been around since the introduction of P2P technologies. It is based on interconnected, encrypted ftps and uses IRC channels to communicate. This is one of the situations that proves that attacking websites that index download links through legislation like the “Sinde” Law or Hadopi will not affect the circulation of said content.
  • The lack of original version content with subtitles, the impossibility of accessing new releases online immediately (or at times that suit the users’ needs), and the sale of films in precarious formats (DVD) months after their release date, are problems and consumer demands that the industry ignores. This lack of response encourages and strengthens communities like ‘The Scene’.
  • Although copyrighted content is already distributed online by communities of users, online home viewing clashes with the interests of industries that will not accpet the need to change. Theatrical exhibition lobbies refuse to screen new releases if they are simultaneously available online.
  • Plataforms such as Filmin (based on the Netflix) try to meet the demands of these ‘new viewers’ through online premieres of films in original version with subtitles, in exchange for a monthly fee. Although most of the content they offer is not mainstream, they clash with the exclusivity demanded by traditional organisations in the existing cultural market (cinemas, DVD sales, public and private television stations, etc.) These public and private agents make it impossible for a stable online film market to exist. Independent production companies do dialogue with this reality, unlike multinational corporations.
  • Online sharing of copyrighted content is not a defense of “everything for free.” Rather, it expresses the need for an in-depth debate that can lead existing industry frameworks to adapt to a new reality that is already operating. There is an unmet demand for the supply of online films under a model that is sustainable for consumers, creators, prosumers, producers, etc. Until this ‘legal’ model exists, there is no point in talking about ‘illegal’ practices.
  • Aside from the commercial solutions proposed by the panel, there was also a discussion around the need to develop public projects. For example, ‘Le quadrature du net’ is working on platforms in response to the implementation of the Hadopi Law, and the lack of ideas coming out of the industry.
  • Commercial projects seek solutions in the paradigm of productive economy. But the benefits of collective production build up in the financial economy, where it is possible to capitalise on the cognitive production generated in the social network services, for example. From this point of view, the focus of the debate shifts away from commercial solutions governed by the logic of the productive economy, towards designing other forms of redistributing the wealth generated by online cooperation.

3.2 YProductions: Companies of the Commons [VIDEO]

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The research project Companies of the commons (empresas del procomún) a joint initiative of YP with Colaborabora, focuses particularly on cultural and/or social companies that run on collectively produced and managed resources, thanks to alliances between social institutions, prosumers, consumers, etc. Group projects such as Traficantes de Sueños, guifi.net, etc are experimenting with the possibility of creating economically and socially sustainable models that depend on the communities that constitute them. This situation highlights the need to re-think labels such as ‘public’, ‘private’ and ‘communal’, and ways of collectivising the profits and benefits that support these enterprises. The research provides an insight into the impact of this situation, through quantitative and qualitative analyses of governance models, the balance between communal and private benefits/profits, and the establishment of ethical principles to govern communally created resources.

3.3 Jesús Encinar: Startups in Spain [VIDEO]

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The creator of online platforms such as www.idealista.com. analysed issues and problems of online entrepreneurship. Aggregated data shows that large corporations are the ones that are losing employees year after year. Startups and small companies create new jobs, but the legal framework does little to encourage entrepreneurial initiatives. In an article published on his blog, Encinar listed 10 mesures’to encourage the growth of more startups in Spain, where the growth of online companies is hindered by legislation and bodies such as “the ‘Sinde’ Law, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD), gaming legislation, etc. Rather than a technological innovation cluster, but we are increasingly becoming a recalcitrant country in terms of the creation of online businesses.” In order to increase our competitiveness, we have to become the best place in the world for Internet startups – a ‘digital haven’ – by removing obstacles and lessening the blow that risking or failing in an online business currently entails.

3.4 Kayros Transmedia: Scriptwriters’ cooperative [VIDEO]

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The scriptwriters who are currently part of Kayros Transmedia decided to set up a company in order to defend their rights. This process, which is not without contradictions, was their response to a twofold problem. On one hand, the growing tendency to outsource services in the cultural industries, meant that their working conditions were worsening, and at the same time they were losing their collective negotiation power. On the other, they needed to find alternative solutions to those suggested by the traditional union, because their needs no longer match the roadmap and “interests” of these organisations. Under the Kayros Transmedia brand, they sold script ideas to production companies so as to negotiate with television channels. In a second stage, they tried to do without intermediaries and dealt directly with the television stations. Under this brand, they attempt to collectively negotiate their objective working conditions (salary) while also improving their subjective conditions (personal satisfaction). They believe that an infrastructure for creating more affordable audiovisual products favours the creative grassroots – photographers, scriptwriters, etc. – because by cooperating and sharing resources (the Internet, rent, brainpower), they can offer low-cost quality without sacrificing their salaries.

3.5 Daniel Granados (Producciones Doradas): Something better than Spotify? [VIDEO]

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If we look at the extent to which record industries have adapted to the current changes, and at the role of creators and public policies, we can make the following claims: the development of compression systems (MP3), data storage technologies, and mobile phones has radically changed consumer habits; the introduction of P2P technologies has led the industry to respond by testing new business models such as pay-per-download or subscription. But there has not been a true overhaul of the system: instead of making things simpler, these models have been adding more elements to the value chain, raising costs and clearly damaging creators. While Spotify offers a good service, it generates incredibly low profits for artists: for each 4 listens, artists receive $0.00029. A true, effective change of model comes about when the role of the intermediary changes. Plataforms such as Bancamp, which allows artists to create a profile and sell their music under fairer conditions, Soundclouds, which allows users to share music on social networks, and Jamendo, which runs on free music, are examples of truly sustainable mutations. Projects such as the Birmingham music archive or Fora do eixo (Brasil) aim to support a music scene and generate profits for the groups that constitute them.

3.6 Kollector: Tracking broadcasts for a fair distribution of royalties. [VIDEO]

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Changes in consumer habits in the music industries have led to a growing interest in tracking the broadcast of songs on online radio and television stations. New technologies do not only change the way we consume music, they should also trigger a change in the existing royalties collection and distribution model. Kollector is an online platform that provides real-time information on the songs broadcast by radio and television stations around the world. Users upload their songs to a database, and a series of algorithms are used for checking the number of broadcasts on stations that are tuned in, in real time (1,900 internationally). The program generates tracking and broadcast statistics for each song, and offers users detailed information. The users are songwriters, composers, performers, producers, editors and managers, collective royalties associations and radio stations. Although companies also use the service, Kollector offers it free of charge (soon to be at reasonable prices), so that the artists can use it themselves, without the need for intermediaries.

3.7 Microcredits and Crowdfunding platforms: Verkami [VIDEO] Flattr [VIDEO] Goteo [VIDEO]

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For months now, crowdfunding has become one of the possible means of funding for cultural projects. Group microfunding offers the opportunity to support projects in exchange for rewards that are in keeping with the micropatron’s contribution:

  • Verkami Over the past 10 months, 110 projects have been funded, 70% of those that launched a campaign. The majority of requests are in the range of 3,000-5,000€. 90% of those who achieved 20% of their request ended up getting the total amount.
  • Flattr Users can share their contributions to content platforms (blogs, videoblogs, etc.) through the flattr button. Flattr will soon be set up in Spain.
  • Goteo has decided on a model that differs from that of pioneers such as Kickstarter. Goteo seeks to fund open projects with the capacity to generate communities that make it possible to reproduce their ‘source code’. It is not only based on financial contributions, and combines elements of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.

X.net suggests expanding the capacities of crowdfunding platforms at the legal level in order to attract capital investors, transforming the current standardised model (based on marketing and pre-purchasing) to a shareholder, shared ownership model.

3.8 Communiqué on the Crisis Affecting the SGAE and Copyright Lluis Cabrera [VIDEO]

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In view of the crisis that was unleashed with the revelations around the Spanish collecting society SGAE, we must now demand a total overhaul of the system, not simply a whitewash.

The 7 points in the Charter for Innotvation, Creativity and Access to Culture, drafted at the 2009 FCForum:

  • Authors should always be able to revoke the mandate of the royalties collection societies.
  • Royalties collection societies are private organisations that should only and exclusively manage the “accounts” of their members, which are in no case the totality of the creative community.
  • Free competition among management bodies should be guaranteed, as it is with private bodies. Authors and artists should be able to freely register whatever works they wish to in any royalties collection society, while leaving other works unregistered, or registering them with a different society.
  • Authors and publishing companies should not be represented by the same institution, as used to happen in the times of vertical trade unions. All members should have a right to vote. One member, one vote.
  • Above all, royalties management societies should only manage the works that are registered in their data bases.
  • It should not be admissible for any royalties collection society to prevent artists or authors from using free licences.
  • Royalties management societies should not be able to manage our non-attributable taxes, and there should be no other obligatory collection of royalties. Non-attributable moneys should be managed by the state in order to stimulate creation.

The Communiqué on the crisis Affecting the SGAE and Copyright.

  • “The crisis currently affecting the SGAE shows that its actions have been harming author-musicians in several respects: the possible diversion funds on a large scale, management aimed at investments which are at odds with the purposes of the society, the exercise of its political influence in the approval of the very controversial digital levy. All of this is promoting a dangerous feeling of citizen resentment against artistic works, which stems from the abuses accumulated by the cultural and media industry in the course of its history.”
  • “In order for the process to be carried out in a transparent manner, the interests of authors should not be confused with the corporate interests that have perverted their nature. We need to pay attention to the role that SGAE plays in publishing companies, which control enormous catalogues of repertories, and to publicly reveal their links to the major record companies – which have, for decades, absorbed royalties in their contracts – and communication companies.”
  • “Instead of suspecting that authors or Internet users tend to propagate abuse in an irresponsible manner, let us welcome the contributions of specialists from all fields, position the controversy at a level that allows us to feel proud of sharing our art, technologies and dignity.”