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On October 9th delegations from several European Member States will gather in Barcelona to coordinate support programmes for Democratic Digitalisation and digital rights. Under the title of 4D European Conference delegations from member states at ministerial level, cities and regional governments will gather to discuss the support of digital commons, free and open source software and a digital public sphere. The event is organised by Fundació .cat - the Catalan top level domain name foundation - and Xnet, a digital rights civil society organisation. Several civil society organisations of the digital rights and digital commons space join as contributors, such as NOYB from Austria and La Quadrature du Net from France. Free Knowledge Institute collaborates with the organisation to bring together international participants.

The challenge of the privatised digital public sphere is daunting and parties urge the strengthening of public digital infrastructures to reclaim sovereignty in the digital space. Since long we have been working for the democratisation of the net based on open and free technologies and knowledge that can be used and contributed to under equal conditions. The internet nowadays being the foundational layer of any sector of society, and the public spaces being overtaken by online social networks, it is pertinent that these be under public scrutiny and collective ownership, built as digital commons. Digital commons are those resource systems that are under control of the community of users. At the European level between member states an international body is being set up to support and strengthen digital commons. This will be one of the topics of the work programme for the meetings in Barcelona.

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