Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age – By Philippe Aigrain

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Paris, February 3rd, 2012 – Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age is out! Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net, in collaboration with Suzanne Aigrain, describes the creative contribution, a financial model designed to sustain an expanding creative economy in a context where sharing is recognized as a right.

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.

Taking stock of recent economic knowledge about the culture economy, it models and describes a financing model (coined as the “creative contribution”) designed to sustain an expanding creative economy in a context where sharing is recognized as a right. Philosophical, legal, and institutional aspects are also discussed.

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.

Sharing is published under a hybrid publishing model with 4 components:

all under a CC-By-NC-ND license,

  • 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.

Useful links:

  • Book site: http://www.sharing-thebook.net
  • Amsterdam University Press book page: http://www.aup.nl/do.php?a=show_visitor_book&isbn=9789089643858&l=2
  • Chicago University Press (US distributor) book page: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo13742081.html