The interest of copyright in supporting the economy of the commons

Digital commons are collective or collaborative works

Commoners are authors​

Contributing can be recognized as work

Managing free copyright requires a shared structure

The digital commons economy is unique and very diversified

Use existing and community law as leverage

Learn from past economic and legal experiences

 

Digital commons are collective or collaborative works

• Digital is a cultural industry, just like publishing, cinema or music

• Digital commons (software, databases) can be considered works of the mind

Commoners are authors

• Contributors and/or initiators of digital commons can be considered as authors or co-authors (at least in France)

• The notion of author is legally regulated in France: an author of free software retains economic rights over his work.

• A free/digital common work is potentially a collective or collaborative work (hence the notion of co-author)

Contributing is a job

• Contributing to software or a database is a high value-added activity

• You can combine the fact of being an author and having a salaried activity

• A free work can be developed by an employee within a company

  • The author remains the employee (a legal entity cannot be an author)
  • The company is the owner of the rights, provided that this is specified in a copyright assignment contract.
  • Special case of civil servants developing commons within the framework of their functions.

Managing free copyrights requires a shared structure

• Just as has been the case in the field of music or publishing, it is in practice impossible for an individual author to do himself :

  • monitoring all modes of exploitation of its works

  • defending its rights with broadcasters

• New free works are initiated by individuals , sometimes as employees in companies but not always.

The digital commons economy is unique

"A software is free once it is paid"

• A free work is - as a first approximation - not intended to directly receive operating income, one of the specificities of digital commons is their free use and distribution.

• Financial flows linked to the production of a digital commons can only be found upstream of their publication

Use the law as leverage

A free license does not mean that the author no longer has rights, but:

• what entity exists to defend these rights ?

• Even if there were an entity to defend these rights, there are no clearly defined financial flows for their support, but on the contrary a jungle of different economic models

Learn from past experiences

• It is necessary to defend and promote people/authors, offer them an income model, to encourage people to contribute to digital commons and above all to earn income from it (partially or totally)

• There already exist and there have been experiments for changing the law (global license, universal income, etc.), but these proposals have not always been successful and/or are still not very operational.

• Rather than seeking to add to the law and regulations, it is possible to rely on existing law, to draw inspiration from various historical examples such as the private copy royalties, the creation ofcollective rights management organisations such as the SACEM or the SACD, or even the concept of French "cultural exception"