Adnan Hadzi is a documentary film-maker and works in collaboration1 with Lennaart

van Oldenborgh. Currently Adnan is undertaking a PhD entitled "the author vs. the
collective"2 at the University of London researching on new forms of film-making.

Did you say Culture?

"Wer hat dem wird gegeben, wer nicht hat der nimmts sichs eben" (Brecht)

As a member of the D-word3 community I was involved in last years' discussions about
the 'Democracy project', virtually on D-word, and physically at the IDFA Democracy
pitching forum4. Western Democracy is facing its biggest crisis around the issue of
property. The poorest of our planet survive through sharing, smuggling, squatting,
stealing and hospitality. Survival depends on gift-economies and cannot be sustained
through the laws of the ownership society.

Democracy, the idea of liberty, equality, fraternity and freedom of speech, is threatened.
New technologies offer a potential for new ways of production, distribution and
marketing of knowledge and culture through archiving5, file-sharing6 and time-shifting
(look up BBC) systems. Nevertheless, the existing industry is using their political power
to protect an old business model that has been made obsolete by new technologies,
through lobbing for electronic patenting7 and digital rights management.

The Western business model is unsustainable; there cannot be endless growth, endless
profit, endless expansion. In order to sustain profit the ownership society colonises our
intellectual property and our cultural commons -this is unethical. Why does a poor
HIV/AIDS patient has to pay for patents in order to receive her medication?

How can the “democratic” West restrict knowledge and culture to a small group of
engineers and mega corporations? Democracy is based on cultural exchange, diversity
and education. A democratic system should, by definition, want to share commons;
therefore we have to move from the property system to gift economy8, from copyright to
hospitality.

“Let's not make a film about politics, let's make a film politically” (Godard ). Isn't it time to
look for new ways of production and distribution? In my point of view, when it comes to
the 'Democracy project' a brave act and statement at the same time would be to allow

1 http://hofilms.co.uk
2 http://filmcode.org
3 http://d-word.com
4 http://dayzero.co.za/democracy/democracy.html
5 http://archive.org
6 http://bittorent.com
7 http://ffii.org
8 http://altruists.org
for an open online distribution of culture, copyleft9 all films and media material and
make it freely available for everybody to view, remix and redistribute. free culture = love.

9 http://artlibre.org or http://creativecommons.org