For many Free Culture is the logical extension of the Free Software philosophy applied to cultural and artistic work, initiated in the mid eighties by Richard M. Stallman. The term "free culture" itself was originally the title of a 2004 book by Lawrence Lessig, considered a founding father of the free culture movement. Mr Lessig has indeed succesfully channeled this natural evolution into a dedicated movement for people who cared little about writing software and created specific licensed specifically tailored for work of art rather than software.

In pratice this means that a movement of people have decided to create and make available their art, allowing others to freely use, study, distribute and improve on the work of others. Redistribution of those improvements are of course allowed and encouraged.

One could "even" consider the Free Culture movement as a group of individuals and organizations building a body of work for society to benefit from freely without all the current locks that are being put on modern (and less modern) culture (copyrights extensions, attempts at suppressing the 'fair use rights', etc) by the media industry.

One can find a complete definition on Freedom Defined website which goes through an extensive explanation of the various freedoms needed for a work of art to qualify and what to more specifically pay attention to.

To summarise, since all creative work can be considered as a derivative of something an author has experienced (studies, reading, traveling, his friends' lives, etc); Free Culture is really just acknowledging it and providing society with the same rights.

Culture Freedom Day is a worldwide celebration of Free Culture. Initiated in 2012 by the same organization promoting Software Freedom it aims at educating the worldwide public about the benefits of using and encouraging Free Culture as well as providing an international day to serve as a platform to promote Free Culture artists. The non-profit organization Digital Freedom International coordinates CFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local CFD events to impact their own communities.

Many thanks to our Sponsors and Supporters without whom we could not make such a celebration happen.

• Find out more about Digital Freedom International and CFD.
• Read more about Free Culture on our webite.

We have envisioned Culture Freedom Day as a day where Free Culture art is exhibited, as much as possible, and celebrated. Be it a photo exhibition, a concert, playing music in the streets or organization movie screening, as long as it is clear to the public that what you are showing is Free Culture you would be right on target. Of course a combination of all forms of Free Culture art is fine too, with short discussions about the definition of Free Culture, how to make one's work Free Culture and where to find Free Culture online. The cherry on the cake would be to showcase one or several Free Culture artists who would happen to live in your area. We have set up a special section in our forum for such match making opportunities.

Culture Freedom Day will be hosted annually starting on Saturday May 19th, 2012 and probably every third Saturday of May each subsequent year.

Our Vision

Objectives

1. To celebrate culture freedom and the people behind it
2. To foster a general understanding of culture freedom, and encourage adoption of free culture licenses
3. To create more equal access to opportunities by growing the body of cultural work accessible to all
4. To promote constructive dialogue on responsibilities and rights in the cultural society
5. To be inclusive of organizations and individuals that share our Vision
6. To be pragmatic, transparent, and responsible as an organisation