Source: https://2010.fcforum.net/en/working-documents/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 00:44:30+00:00

Document:
There is no direct causal relationship between file-sharing and the decline in revenues in the music industry. File sharing benefits the economy in long and short term. It is estimated that file sharing injects 100 million euros a year into the economy of Holland..
According to economists from the Harvard School of Economics, filesharing has not decreased creativity nor cultural production. In 2007, the number of records released grew from 35,516 to 79,695, including 25,159 digital albums. At an international level, the number of films produced every year has increased from 3,807 in 2003 to 4,989 in 2007.
Over the past decade, the impact of file sharing networks has led to a very rapid diversification of music content and distribution, resulting in greater consumption of music in its different forms.
The report, published by the economy research center FEDEA, harshly criticizes the Government's plans to clamp down on users offile-sharing networks. The authors claim that the current proposals are a useless and an ineffective way to defend artists because they cling to an old model that has proven ineffective in fighting piracy.
Most people who “illegally” download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.
“Why does the music industry persist in saying that every download is a lost sale? If you even think about it, it can’t be true. People – even downloaders – only have a finite amount of money. In times gone by, sure, they would have been buying vinyl albums. But if you stopped them downloading, would they troop out to the shops and buy those songs? I don’t think so. I suspect they’re doing something different. I think they’re spending the money on something else”.
While gains in digital sales might signal a shift away from sales of physical music, sales of vinyl albums grew by 33%, with 2.5 million vinyl units sold. Many of the top-selling vinyl artists like The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan are household names, but just as many are lesser-known independent artists and darlings of the indie-rock blogosphere like Animal Collective, Bon Iver and Iron & Wine who round out the top 10 with critical darlings Radiohead and Wilco. Also notable is the fact that two out of every three vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store.
Vuze analyzes it's consumers: Heavy movie fans, Avid online video buffs (at the expense of “live” TV), trailblazing tech consumers, ultra connected online influencers and people uniquely attracted to science fiction and animation content.
U.S. Internet users watched 32.4 billion videos in January with Google Sites ranking as the top U.S. video property with 12.8 billion videos. YouTube.com accounted for nearly 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 903.1 million videos, or 2.8 percent of all online videos viewed. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 491.8 million (1.5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 435.5 million (1.3 percent) and Viacom Digital with 361.2 million (1.1 percent).
This report proves that the “filesharers” are the biggest music buyers.
“Antipiracy” politic is much more expensive than industry renovation.
A number of reasons why the use of copyright filters should not be allowed, encouraged or mandated on U.S. Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks.
Changes in technologies for reproducing and redistributing digital goods (e.g., music, movies, software, books) have dramatically affected profitability of these goods, and raised concerns for future development of socially valuable digital products. However, broader illegitimate distribution of digital goods may have offsetting demand implications for legitimate sales of complementary non-digital products. We examine the negative impact of file-sharing on recorded music sales and offsetting implications for live concert performances. We find that file-sharing reduces album sales but increases live performance revenues for small artists, perhaps through increased awareness.
Sustainability, openness and p2p production in the world of fashion.
David Bahanovich and Dennis Collopy for University Of Hertfordshire, Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People, Summer 2009.
A survey among British people from 14 to 24 years old shows that music remains the most valued form of entertainment. Young people have an inherent sense of what copyright is, but choose to ignore it - the vast majority of respondents knew that sharing copyrighted content is not legal, yet continue to do so.
The short-run and long-run effects of copyright may differ substantially. In the short run, copyright benefits rights holders at the expense of users. In the long run, the benefits associated with any additional supply due to copyright protection may more than offset the access costs of users so that copyright may offer a net welfare improvement for all stakeholders (i.e. a Pareto improvement). This long-run perspective provides no comprehensive, general case for copyright, however. Because users include follow-up creators, copyright is not unequivocally beneficial to creators and excessive copyright protection could even diminish the supply of copyright works. Even if one were to disregard consumer interests - for example in some natural rights perspectives - an efficient copyright system still has to strike a balance between divergent interests.
The latest figures show that live concerts generate an annual income of 150 million euros. The number of concert goers grew by 34% to 33.4 million.
A survey promoted by industry groups in the US, including Microsoft, analysing the economic usefulness of 'fair use'.
Creative Commons. Defining “noncommercial”: A study of how the online population understands “noncommercial use”. (2009, September).
Creative Commons noncommercial licenses preclude use of a work “in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. This empirical study states that non commercial licenses are increasing to license online collaboration.
“So what is the secret origin of these ubiquitous statistics? What doomed planet’s desperate alien statisticians rocketed them to Kansas? Ars did its best to find the fountainhead. Here’s what we discovered”.
Benkler states that commons-based peer production is becoming increasingly important as a efficient and democratic form of resource management and production separate from the market and the state.
Hess, C. & Ostrom, E. (Eds.) (2007). Understanding knowledge as a commons: From theory to practice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Hess and Ostrom (2009 Nobel Prize) argue that the commons is a more efficient form of governance for knowledge-based resources under certain conditions.
Terranova, T. (2000). Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy. Social Text 18, 33-58.
Terranova documents how corporations (based on copyright and proprietary software) are making profit from voluntary work.
Castells, M. The rise of the network society. Malden, MA: Blackwell. (2000).
Castells argues that network-based information flows are better suited to the emerging society.
This study found (with statistical significance) that online infrastructure based on copyleft and FLOSS tend to favor higher levels of collaboration in online communities, while copyright and proprietary software are unable to generate highly collaborative interaction.
Santos, B. de S., (Ed.). (2007). Another knowledge is possible. London, UK: Verso.
Santos discusses the growing importance of a way of conceiving knowledge that is pro-public domain.
Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Von Hippel argues that user-generated content constitutes a key source of innovation.
Weber, S. The success of open source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (2004).
Weber shows how Free and open source models are a more successful form of software production than proprietary software modlels.
Bollier offers a thorough overview of the phenomenon of the commons, from the knowledge commons to the nature commons.
Rheingold, H. The virtual community. Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. (1993).
Howard Rheingold has been called the First Citizen of the Internet. In this book he tours the “virtual community” of online networking. He describes a community that is as real and as much a mixed bag as any physical community one where people talk, argue, seek information, organize politically, fall in love, and dupe others.
Stalder, F. (2010). Digital Commons. In: Hart, Keith; Laville, Jean-Louis; Cattani, Antonio David (eds). The Human Economy: A World Citizen’s Guide. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press.
Stalder's essay is one of 30 texts compiled by the editors. It explores different approaches to the formation of a “digital commons” against the forces of corporate privatization.
Subirats, J. (2002). The dilemmas of an inevitable relationship: Democratic innovation and the information and communication technology. In J. Jordana (Ed.), Governing telecommunications and the new information society in Europe (pp.228-250). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Joan Subirats reviews a series of different ways of approaching and conceiving of the democratic application of ICTs, taking into account political aims and also its limitations.
Popular music has defined each generation. And, as we began the next millennium, music is also shaping a new generation of technologies and laws that will have consequences far beyond this particular art form. This is a report of a conversation about music, and more particularly, how musicians should be paid for digital works.
Dans, Enrique (2010) ¿Cuadrando el círculo?
Who said “all for free”?
Becker, Konrad (2009) Strategic Reality Dictionary. Deep Infopolitics and Cultural Intelligence, Autonomedia, New York.
Moulier Boutang, Yann (2004) Cognitive Capitalism and Entrepreneurship, Decline in industrial entrepreneurship and the rising of collective intelligence Cornell University, September 28-29, 2007.
This paper analyses how the shift to a third kind of capitalism, what we call cognitive capitalim, is radically modifying the nature of enterpreneurship. This new kind of capitalism relies upon the capture of positive externalities that are increasingly produced, located and active outside of the historical boundareis of companies in order to achieve constant innovation and the production of different audiences, rather than market commodities. As a result, new models are emerging, and the extent that these new post-industrial spin-offs will become new hegemonic business models, or remain marginal, will depend largely on their relationship with the market, the State, property rights, and new ethical, communial, civic and political values.
One global ontology is not a solution to the problem and a local subdomain is not a solution either. But if each agent has uses a mix of a few ontologies of different scale, that is forms a global solution to the problem. There is some model which reasonably well described these systems, and that given that model one can show that the scale-free distribution of communities is optimal.
Wanting large music libraries and mostly unable to afford them, we kids recorded as many albums and radio shows on cassette as we could.
The emergence of productions systems - particularly those that produce knowledge, but also products and services — based on large communities of distributed individuals who rely on digital collaboration platforms (defined as P2P systems) has challenged the basic principles of the economy. This article analyzes some of these models and introduces the principle theories that underline them.
This manifesto examines the first working years of Dyne.org reflecting on notions of collective production, creativity and freedom. It also deals with some of the problems and contradictions that affect the communities who develop free software.
This article analyzes the convenience of a guaranteed minimum income as a way to provide a retribution to cognitive work in the context of a generalized capitalist crisis. When creativity, communication, knowledge, social networks have become central elements of the business jargon, we need to alter traditional economic wisdom in order to find more sustainable models to suit this reality.
The public domain should be public by default.
Rizk and Shaver have produced a scientific report on how intellectual property frames access to knowledge in Egypt.
This study analyses different notions of culture that have been handled in cultural policy, and how it has been building up an economic sense through the 'Cultural Industries' and 'Creative Industries'. The first part focuses on understanding how neoliberal thinking and the paradigm of the creative industries have affected government policy. Through the case study of the Brazilian model, we analyze different ways of understanding cultural policy that is not solely defined by economic interests, and concludes with the possibility of replacing the discourse surrounding the 'Creative Industries' with a new coinage that takes the “Business of the commons” as an engine of a new paradigm that canweave more balanced relations between economy, culture and society.
Larkin, Brian (2008) Signal and Noise. Media, Infraestructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Duke University Press, London.
Lemos, Ronaldo y Castro, Oona (2008) Tecnobrega: Pará Reinventing the Music Business, Aeroplano Editora.
In the face of the music industry crisis and the “legal remedies” that aim to revitalise the sector, this book showcases emerging alternative business models. “Tecnobrega” is the main case study, which shows how the musical production generated in Brazilian favelas and distributed on the strees through non-official hawkers is an informal manufacturer of this phenomenon. The business model is mainly based on the economy of experience, the economy based on parties and concerts that has become a mass phenomenon.
Six “impossible things”: GNU/Linux, Wikipedia, the Creative Commons, the Blender Foundation, Open Hardware, and the OLPC/Sugar project. All created under free licenses for everyone to use, in defiance of our conventional ideas of business economics. Is it magic, coincidence, or just plain common sense at work here?
This article compares two visions that adress different restrictions in terms of the use of free/libre licenses. On one side, those who try to form a commons that can be used, distributed and exploited by all. On the other, those who have as their objective allowing access, and do not consider other uses. The issue is basically about what “free/libre culture” really means and how it can be sustainable.
Challenges to traditional copyright resulting from peer-to-peer applications, free software, filesharing and appropriation art have caused a wide ranging debate on the future of copyright. Dmytri Kleiner brings existing critiques of material property from the left to bear upon the realm of copyleft artistic production and asks how, within the existing copyright regime, can artists earn a living?
Howkins, John (2001) The Creative Economy.
The Creative Economy is a comprehensive analysis of the new economy, based on creative people, creative industries and creative cities. John Howkins starts with each person’s individual creativity and explores self-identity, art, business, society, and global development.
Pardo Kuklinski, Hugo Geekonomía, Un radar para producir en el postdigitalismo, Col.lecció Transmedia XXI. Laboratori de Mitjans Interactius, Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona 2010.
An analysis of the crisis of traditional intermediaries, such as the “copyright” “, and academic and media claims that 99% of artists benefit from Internet massification, because their production costs tend to zero.
The perspective of software designer.
The former president of the spanish region of Extremadura who implement free software in the whole region.
A declaration that includes practical examples. It has been signed by organisations such as the International Music Managers' Forum (IMMF) and The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which Microsoft is also a member of. It asks Brussels for more future vision in relation to copyright legislation and a greater commitment to new economic models and remuneration for the creative community.
Musicians including Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox, Billy Bragg, Blur’s David Rowntree and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien said last night that the public should not be prosecuted for downloading “illegal” music from the internet.
“Of course people have to have a system in place to be able to share and every country will have to do what they want surrounding that, as long as they don’t infringe on freedom of speech and access to knowledge. Which kind of sets the barrier quite high. This idea has been discussed for hundreds of years”.
Ownership” is starting to change its meaning. If you buy a movie from iTunes you “own” the right to watch it on certain devices within certain constraints. When you “own” a DVD, you have the right to watch it whenever and wherever you want. However: you must watch ten minutes of promos, trailers and anti-piracy threats. I’ll take the download, please.
The days of producers and musicians putting bands together just to get a recording deal so they can get paid by the record company for a product that usually never even gets released; those days are over. It’s time record companies went back to their roots and became what they started out to be; entities who record working acts in order to capture the performance for posterity, and make a promotional tool to get audiences to the next show.
“That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it’s because they want to “pirate” the game or just because it’s a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams.
John Buckman, The Founder’s Rant, Magnatune.
Peter Sunde about Flattr Social Micro Donations, 22/04/2010.
The Cosmonaut is a science fiction film of Riot Cinema Collective using the Internet for financing and distribution, collaboratively and also comes with a Creative Commons license so you can edit, copy, remix and share.
Put in perspective: a typical advance for a book of this kind is $5,000. Odds are, I wouldn't see royalties at all. So right now I'm $4600 ahead of where I would have been under the traditional “pay first” model. Also, under this system, I have a lot more readers than your typical book aimed at this market. Canadian best-sellers ship 5,000 copies. I've already done that, fifty times over.
A balancing of the rights of authors and consumers, the re-introduction of a private copying exception, a remixing permission and a new regulatory agency for copyright issues are among the core points the Brazilian Ministry of Culture has planned for the new copyright law.
This article provide the public with two possible approaches that may be taken to get the problem solved. The approaches are called “negative” and “positive” spillovers, with the first assessing a penalty, which size would depend on the piracy level defined at a certain ISP's network, while the second one would demand ISPs to voluntarily pay a fee in exchange for the right to transmit copyrighted content on their networks legally.
How to recognize non-market exchanges over the internet while funding creation.
A statement that demands the restructuring of collecting societies, and greater transparency given that they are means to manage the remuneration of creative work.
The legal battles surrounding peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing are a losing proposition for everyone. The record labels continue to face sliding sales, while the tens of millions of American file sharers American music fans are made to feel like criminals. Every day the collateral damage mounts privacy at risk, innovation stymied, economic growth suppressed, and random unlucky individuals singled out for lawsuits by the recording industry. In the meantime, the lawsuits against music fans have not put a penny into the pockets of artists.
A voluntary collective licensing solution.
The stated purpose of the tax is to “compensate” musicians for copying done by individuals using DATs. However, 57 percent of the funds collected would go to record companies and music publishers leaving less than half to the people who participate in the creative process. Most of these remaining funds would go to musical superstars, and thus would do little to encourage musical creativity. Meanwhile, DAT users would be unable to make full use of the power of DAT technology.
The pros and cons of applying a flaat rate for access to culture administrated by collecting societies.
David Bollier and Laurie Racine Ready to Share: Fashion and the Ownership of Creativity: a global, competitive and profitable industry that does not rely upon copyright protection for its creative output.
Bauwens, M, The Political Economy of Peer Production. 1000 Days of Theory. (2005).
Bauwens provides a detailed discussion of issues introduced by the peer economy, presenting key practical experiences as well as theorical approaches to analysing it.
Copyright laws and enforcement practices around the world are changing rapidly. But most often, the changes are for the benefit of rights holders only, disregarding consumers’ interests in fair and affordable access to educational and cultural materials. To help map global trends in this area, Consumers International surveyed 34 countries for its 2010 IP Watchlist.
British Council compilation of opinions on the Future Copyright, during the 300th anniversary of the enactment of the law.
The YouTube video that Sony chose not to censure because it realized that it was full of advantages.
Empirical research on new forms of open innovation developed by companies based on an intensive use of new technologies of information and communication.
International Commons Conference in Berlin.
Often the reports by the industries are biased because they consider only part of the agents involved. For example, in their reports on the creative community they consider only the situation of the collecting societies members as an indication of the status of the whole creative community when, now day , many of the artists are not members of any collecting society. This results in distorted data reports that unfortunately are often accepted by governments. Yet few rigorous reports made at the request of cultural industries have to admit that we are facing a paradigm shift and not a “looting” as insinuating.
The TERA Report is one of the most famous. Remember how it was used to victimize the situation of cultural industries with the pathos of lost jobs. But reading it in depth (23.25.27.29.31 pages), we can see that it had to admit that, while the conventional models have losses of between 6 and 35%, the digital business model has up to 1130% increases. So could it be that the jobs are not lost but merely generate elsewhere?
The music industry is growing like never before.
In 2009, four out of ten viewers preferred to watch a Spanish film rather than a foreigner one. This contradicts the minister of Culture, Gonzalez Sinde, who blamed the crisis affecting national cinema partly on 'piracy' on the Internet.
Although the survey, commissioned by the Canadian government, unintentionally shows that P2P networks provide benefits to music.
Spanish collecting societies enjoy a monopoly position. This reduces their incentive to operate efficiently and can lead to problems regarding fee levels, as shown by several cases of unfair and/or discriminatory fees examined by Spanish antitrust authorities. The aim of this Report is to explore problems regarding fees and restrictions on competition in this sector, by analysing the current regulatory framework and certain practices carried on by collecting societies, in order to make recommendations for achieving a more competitive model of collective rights management.
The difficulty concert venues have in finding time to seek alternatives and / or solutions to correct the detected errors often coincides with a lack of cooperation and the unwillingness of collecting societies to negotiate specific rates and conditions for this sector.
TorrentWatch is a virtual snapshot of the world’s P2P file sharing community that illustrates the ratio of up-loaders (seeders) to down-loaders (leechers) of globally-popular movies by simultaneously comparing the users' physical locations by location and during a standardized 24 hour period of time.
Aicholzer, G. & Burkert H. (2004). Public Sector Information in the Digital Age. Between Markets, Public Management and Citizen's Right. Celtenham, Edward Elgar Publishing.
The volume reviews key issues and developments in the controversial area of public sector information (PSI). It addresses the fundamental themes, challenges and conflicts surrounding the access to, and use of, PSI in the new digital era. Using detailed empirical analyses and case studies from across Europe and the USA, the book focuses on the crucial policy, economic, legal and social issues.
Bruguiere J.M. (2002). Les donn√©es publiques et le droit. Paris, Editions Litec.
This work studies the Public Sector Information, which is defined as the information produced within the public service and involve many different stakeholders. The analysis is lead in the perspective of the European information market, but it takes also into account the impact of PSI on social values. In addition the work studies the public bodies having the mission to inform and the information spreading activities limited by security reasons. More generally the work analyses the legal issues related to the dissemination of these public data.
Burkert H. (1993). The Law and Policies of Commercialization of Public Sector Information in the EC. Stockholm, Institutet f√∂r r√§ttsinformatik.
The research focuses on the legal framework and policies of PSI re-use in a market perspective before the issuing and implementation of the PSI Directive of 2003.
Derclaye E. (2008). Does the Directive on the Re-use of Public Sector Information affect the State's database sui-generis right ? In: Gaster J., Schweighofer E. & Sint P. Knowledge Rights - Legal, societal and related technological aspects. Austrian Computer Society.
The Database Directive, which created a new database sui generis right and harmonised the copyright provisions for databases, does not exclude “state databases” from protection. The question is whether the state should benefit from such intellectual property protection. De lege ferenda, it has been advocated that neither copyright nor sui generis right should protect such databases for several reasons, a major one being that they are financed by taxpayer's money. Several solutions exist de lege lata to try and curtail this negative aspect of the Database Directive as applicable to “state databases” (mainly the human right to information and competition law). One solution, specific to the situation of the state, has not been discussed in depth yet. It is provided by the Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive which grants the possibility for anyone to re-use public sector information (and therefore data from state databases) free of charge or at minimal cost, even for commercial purposes. Therefore, even if the state could claim sui generis right on some of its databases, the PSI Directive appears to reduce this right quite substantially. The paper examines in detail whether the PSI Directive does actually do so and analyses some national implementation laws which further highlight its ineffectiveness in curtailing the sui generis right in state databases. It then proposes solutions to remedy this problem.
The Directive provides with the current European legal framework on PSI. It defines the subject matter and explains the general principles on PSI re-use, without imposing any obligations of re-use to the member states. It is complemented by the more recent INSPIRE Directive.
The Communication of the European Commission on the digital agenda for Europe refers also to public sector information defining it as an important source of potential growth of innovative online services (see in particular pages 6-7; 9-10 and 31-32).
Janssen K. & Dumortier J. (2003). Towards a European Framework for the Re-Use of Public Sector Information: A Long and Winding Road. International Journal of Law & Information Technology, vol. 11, n. 2.
Information owned by public sector bodies has, next to democratic importance, a considerable economic value for the industry in general and the information industry in particular. Since the 1980s, the European Commission has tried to stimulate the public sector to make its information available for re-use. In June 2002, it finally presented a proposal for a directive on this subject. The article gives an overview of events and documents leading to this proposal and attempts to make an assessment of the proposal.
Longhorn R.A. & Blakemore M. (2008). Geographic Information. Value, Pricing, Production, and Consumption. Celtenham, Edward Elgar Publishing. Boca Raton, CRC Press.
Bringing producer and consumer debates together, the book provides a coherent perspective on what have become emotional and territorial issues of IPR protection and liberation. It addresses a range of issues relating to GI, from its definition, purpose, and use to how GI affects individuals, organizations, and governments. It examines business issues including pricing, exploitation, competition, and IPR in private, commercial, and public domain environments. It also introduces a detailed case study that shows how the GI collection and dissemination policies affect regional and global environmental monitoring programs.
The study has analyzed the impact of adopting different models for the provision of public sector information by trading funds. Its basic task has been to examine the cost and benefits for society, and the effects on government revenue, of four different charging policies: profit-maximization, average cost (cost-recovery), marginal cost and zero cost; both on their own and when interacted with various data distinctions such as raw versus value-added, and unrefined versus refined. The study focused on the six largest trading funds by data provision: the Met Office, Ordnance Survey, the UK Hydrographic Office, the Land Registry, Companies House and the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency.
This report analyses the growing importance of public sector information (PSI) and content as part of the digital broadband content work programme, following studies on scientific publishing, music, online computer and video games and mobile content and analysis setting out digital content strategies and policies. It suggests to define public sector information in broader terms compared to the European Directive.
The Recommendation indicates the principles for enhancing access and more effective use of PSI for public and private sectors; an optimization of access and re-use of PSI would have a positive impact on total returns on public investments and economic and social benefits through a more efficient distribution, an enhanced innovation, a development of new uses, a market-based competition. International policy principles would contribute to the global exchange and re-use of public sector information.
Pas J. & De Vuyst B. (2004). Re-Establishing the Balance Between the Public and the Private Sector: Regulating Public Sector Information Commercialization in Europe. The Journal of Information, Law and Technology, n. 2.
The paper describes the economic value of government information and documents, and its potential and actual commercial use. It then analyzes the conceptually different approaches in Europe and the United States towards a legal framework for the commercial use of public sector documents and government information. The commercialization by governments of their own information and the arguable difficulties it creates for fair competition with the private sector are indicated with some policy and ethical considerations. Finally, a short analysis of the new EU directive is included and some conclusions are drawn.
Pollock R. (2009). The Economics of Public Sector Information. University of Cambridge, Faculty of Economics, Cambridge Working Papers in Economics.
The paper gives an overview of the economics of 'public sector information' (PSI) focusing on the question of funding and regulatory structure. That is: who should pay to maintain public sector information and what regulatory structure should be put in place to support this.
Ponti B. (2008). Il Regime dei Dati Pubblici. Esperienze europee e ordinamento nazionale. Maggioli Editore.
This work is a collection of papers on (mainly) legal issues such as access and re-use of public sector information in several European countries (Germany, UK, France, Spain and Italy). A particular focus is on Italy.
Van Eechoud M. & Van Der Wal B. (2008). Creative Commons licensing for Public Sector Information: Opportunities and Pitfalls. University of Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law.
The Creative Commons model seems an attractive instrument for public sector bodies that seek to enhance transparent access to their information, be it for purposes of democratic accountability or re-use for economic or other uses. The study examined that hypothesis and highlights the major opportunities and pitfalls of the Creative Commons model for public sector information. It assesses where there is a match between the creative commons model and the principles of freedom of information law and the Public Sector Information Directive (EC Directive 2003/98 on the re-use of public sector information) as implemented in the new chapter V-A of the Dutch Freedom of Information Act (Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur). The assessment was made not only at the more principled, abstract level, but also at the level of the individual licensing terms. It is preceded by an analysis of government information as subject of intellectual property rights, under the Dutch Copyright Act and the Database Act.
Van Eechoud M. (2006). The Commercialization of Public Sector Information. In: Hugenhoz B. & Guibault L. The Future of the Public Domain. Identifying the Commons in Information Law. The Hague, Kluwer Law International.
This research studies the public sector information market re-uses in a legal perspective, focusing on the exercise of rights existing over it.
Uhlir P. (2009). The socioeconomic Effect of Public Sector Information on Digital Networks. Toward a Better Understanding of Different Access and Reuse Policies. Workshop Summary. Washington, The National Academy Press.
While governments throughout the world have different approaches to how they make their public sector information (PSI) available and the terms under which the information may be reused, there appears to be a broad recognition of the importance of digital networks and PSI to the economy and to society. However, despite the huge investments in PSI and the even larger estimated effects, surprisingly little is known about the costs and benefits of different information policies on the information society and the knowledge economy. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the current assessment methods and their underlying criteria, it should be possible to improve and apply such tools to help rationalize the policies and to clarify the role of the internet in disseminating PSI. The workshop that is summarized in the volume was intended to review the state of the art in assessment methods and to improve the understanding of what is known and what needs to be known about the effects of PSI activities.
Chapter by Gabriel Acquistapace (Usuarios de Software Libre Argentina – USLA) about Cloud Computing in the recent book Argentina Copyleft: “Turbulencias en la Nube”. Avalaible also in German.
Wheeler declaration, including the meaning of “open access” and similar terms in the declaration itself. The meaning of “open access” and other terms in the declaration might put light in what could be defined open/free infrastructure.
Lawrence Lessig – Free Culture.
Towards a core common infrastructure √Ç¬ª, mars 2001, White Paper for the Brennan Center for Justice.
Philippe Aigrain, “Declouding freedom: reclaiming servers, data and services”, FLOSS Roadmap 2010 edition, pages 15-18.
Phillipe Airgrain keynote for the International Commons Conference in Berlin (1-2 November): 9 schemes for the relations between the economy and the commons.
Taking about platforms, and even if openness is frequently neglected, it might be good to read the literature about two-sided-markets – the stuff of Rochet and Tirole is very interesting. Even if – at first glance – you may think that this literature is too theoretic and not related to communities online, that’s not entirely true, once you get the crucial intuitions. This article might be also a good reading in the direction of these intuitions: http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Arribas-Paper.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1285065630000 (Federico Morando).
The literature about the economics of open source software offers some examples (e.g. an old but not yet completely obsolete paper is “The Simple Economics of Open Source” from Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole) (Federico Morando).
Fuster Morell, Mayo (2010). Commercial providers of infrastructure for collective action online Case studies comparison Flickr – Corporation model and Wikihow – Enterprise model. 3rd Free culture research conference – Berlin, October 2010.
Michel Bauwens: An Introduction to Open Business Models. OSBR, April 2008.
Rappa, Michel. Bussiness models on the web.
Aigrain, Philippe (2010). Notes for translators on intervention at the International Commons Conference. November 1, 2010 .
LAST MINUTE UPDATES (From 15th July to 15th october 2010).

References: sui generis
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