Experts discussing the fundamentals and possibilities of the “digital commons” – and thus the future of the internet itself. Winners of the Prix “Net Vision” were presented.

The “Net Vision” category should give a glimpse of the future, show us where the internet is going.
Ed Burton, president of the jury, said the jury was looking for works critically engaging, for “out-referencing” projects. It seems that this was the year of Google as many projects submitted evolved around the search engine.
One of them, which won a distinction, is Newsmap (http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm) by Marcos Weskamp (http://www.marcosweskamp.com/blog/). This project, unlike many others has a critical view point.
The project deals with the information overload and looks at world news from a cultural perspective and tries to understand and underline the international media bias.

Another distinction award went to Move On (www.moveon.org/) which offers a platform for grassroot and collective participation. The idea is to bring diversity in the media sphere, to speak differently for democracy.

The winner for of the Golden Nica went to “Creative Commons”. Its initiator, Laurence Lessig, presented the project which initiated 2 years ago.
He was also there to launch officially CC in Austria (he was just back from Shangai where he lauched it too).
One of the thing that puzzled me about CC and which found an answer during the forum was “Why making national branches?”
– technical reason: countries has different regulation to protect the artistics works,
– according to Lessig it is important to communicate that the idea is NOT American, it has its roots in every country.