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re:publica 17 - All Sessions Podcast
#freebassel : The cost of loving free culture (en)

#freebassel : The cost of loving free culture (en)

re:publica 17 - All Sessions vor 9 Jahren

A public reading of texts dedicated to Bassel Khartabil, loved and celebrated Internet volunteer who was detained in Syria in 2012, demanding his immediate release and reflecting on the love and the costs of free culture.

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Barbara Rühling, Melanie Dulong de Rosnay Bassel Khartabil, loved
and celebrated Internet volunteer was detained in Syria on March
15, 2012. His name was deleted from the Adra Prison’s register,
where he was detained, on 3 October 2015, and there has been no
information about his current status or whereabouts since. Seeing
Bassel paying a high price for his love and participation in free
culture, many of his friends and fellow free culture activists have
reflected on their own fates, actions, and choices. As part of the
#freebassel campaign, 44 activists, artists, designers, developers,
researchers, and writers involved with free knowledge movements
wrote and compiled more than 50 original contributions in the book
"Cost of Freedom". The contributions include paintings, poems,
personal reflections, critical observations, polemical pieces, and
theoretical treatises. Many contributions by Bassel's friends and
family, including his wife Noura Safadi, create a collective memory
of Bassel and urge for his immediate release to his normal life and
freedom. Other contributions by free culture advocates such as
Lorna Campbell, Lawrence Lessig, and Jon Phillips offer personal
reflections about the experience of working within free culture.