Proposal For A New Model Giving Rights To Online Sharing Of Content | Intellectual Property Watch

A new publication by a well-known open access advocate proposes a business model for sharing content online that would recognise sharing as a right. The publication, ‘Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age,’ is by Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of the French civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net, in collaboration with Suzanne Aigrain. ‘To break away from the repressive war on the sharing of culture online, exemplified by the SOPA/PIPA bills in the US or the ACTA agreement on a global scale, Sharing makes a case for the legitimacy and usefulness of non-market sharing between individuals of digital works,’ it said. ‘The creative contribution (a term that Aigrain has been using since 2008) is a flatrate mechanism with original features based on social rights, rewards and remuneration for artists as well as financing of future works, data collection for rewards based on voluntary provision using automated recording on user machines and under their sole control, and more,’ it said. The book has been published in a hybrid form, with four components: [1] The paper book, available globally, [2] a commercial eBook in Epub format, [3] an open access electronic version, all under a CC-By-NC-ND license, [4] and a dedicated “live book“ website at http://www.sharing-thebook.net where you can comment on the book chapters, download source code and datasets, and interactively run models with parameters of your choice."