About the oXcars

Barcelona, one week as World Capital of Shared Culture

The Grand oXcars Ceremony, the event that will change the history of culture

The oXcars, the Show
The oXcars, it’s evident

1500 assitents, more than 200 Spanish and international participants from all areas of culture has take part in an awards ceremony and a week full of events, pooling their efforts to demand a stop to culture being treated as merchandise by royalty management organisations and cultural industry lobbies.

To demand protection and a stop to artificial restrictions applied to digital media like P2P platforms that make it possible to spread knowledge – in the name of democratic progress that benefits each and every one of us.

Our access to knowledge is blocked in the name of “artists”, but the majority of artists in the digital age don’t support the restrictions and neither does civil society, accused of “piracy” wholesale.

Artists say “Not in my name” to the commercialisation of culture, “Not in my name” to Spain’s ‘canon digital’ (digital levy), “Not in my name” to limiting the potential of digital media.

Backed by the document “Greed Breaks the Sack”, released through hundreds of online forums and the press and sent to 287 politicians in July 2008, the OXCARS are an extravaganza, a week of events that will make it patently obvious that the culture of our time is the culture that we all build, share and enjoy.

Times have changed; the Internet allows information and culture to be exchanged horizontally among all citizens. And the means of cultural production must adapt to this new democracy, not the only way around.

Because free and collaborative culture is the Culture of our time, because it’s a fact, because there’s no turning back…

EXGAE & Conservas present:
The awards that will sweep the Grammys, the Goyas, the Max…
The 1st non-competitive awards in the history of Culture…
The 1st international Culture awards held in the shared digital society…

The OXCARS
eXcellence means sharing

Sala Apolo- Barcelona
October 28, at 8.30pm

7 hours of non-stop free culture
New attitude
A free culture extravaganza that isn’t just our response to the latest attacks on freedom in the name of intellectual property, but also a chance to popularise and share “good practices”.

The activities share unexpected links. This isn’t the usual protest event, there’s no discourse or “pedagogy”. We could say it’s a show of the strength and relevance of collaborative culture, through evidence.

Fun, content and impact.

The artists themselves will pay to liberate their “imprisoned” works from the SGAE.

It’s not just economic dividends that are at stake, but the whole way of understanding culture and the right to access to information (which has cost us a couple of centuries of struggles).

Culture comes about through imitation and copying. In the digital and communication age, our digital information and our forms of communication constitute our memory.

Civil society demands the ‘lost profits’ of all the knowledge that is being withheld and stolen from public use in the name of private profits.

We’re bringing down a monopoly.
We don’t want to nurture generations of cultural parasites; we want culture to be alive and productive.

THE ISSUES:

-    Culture in the digital age: new “profitabilities”
-    The creative ecosystem in the digital age: now or never
-    Digital information is what today’s memory is made of
-    Copying and its benefits
-    Lies, bits, the inquisition and P2P
-    13 000 000 pirate households: piracy doesn’t exist, parents are the pirates
-    Banning communication in the communication age
-    P2P: Do we really want to follow in the footsteps of Pakistan, China, France and Sudan?
-    Let’s talk about the middlemen: restructuring in times of crisis. Culture existed before the culture industry
-    Lost profits is counting your chickens before they hatch (and culture is the chickens)
-    Public domain vs. parasites’ profits
-    The right to quote: the key to the link economy

The events will be streamed live:

http://giss.tv/oxcars.ogg

A high-quality documentary will be made for international mass circulation
See also:

http://la-ex.net