Cultura, Tecnología y Comunicación. Una Aproximación con Actitud Copyleft

The relationship between communication and culture has always been close, almost inseparable, since both are intertwined phenomena and social processes, in continuous movement, transformation and negotiation. Gone are the times when its articulations were reduced to linear cause-effect theories or to the dissemination and visibility of symbolic productions and artistic projects in media scenarios from the point of view of marketing. Thus, thinking about the processes of cultural communication in the digital environment implies recognizing that the Internet has not only become the most spectacular means of dissemination and circulation of knowledge, but also a social battlefield in which radical transformations have occurred in the conditions of artistic and cultural production and circulation. Internet is the context, the stage and the materiality of the symbolic productions and the negotiations of meaning of our global village. This chapter intends to problematize the technology-communication-culture relationship and highlight the tension that occurs between cultural rights and intellectual property mechanisms that work in favor of individual and commercial interests to the detriment of the commons (Lafuente, 2007). Similarly, we intend to make a first approach to the work of some cultural projects with a "copyleft attitude", for the right to participation and the democratization of knowledge and culture, with special emphasis on the Ecuadorian context in which access to cultural rights of the population is still reduced and unequal.