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Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use — copyright and related rights — have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy maders, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia projetc. Together the authors argue that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information — is fundamental to a healthy society. The essays range from more theoretical papers on copyright and the history of the public domain, to practical examples and case studies of recent projects that have engaged with the principles of Open Access and Creative Commons licensing. The Digital Public Domain opens up discussion and offers practical solutions to the difficult question of the regulation of culture in the digital age.

As it often happens, the title of my chapter has an ambiguous ring to it. Are we trying to figure out which set of specific changes in copyright legislation would help to achieve the targets set by the specific policy document released by the EU Commission last year? Are we supposed to deal with a broad new vision of the role of copyright intended to foster the generation and dissemination of creativity in the new digital environment? And are we talking about EU Directives or the Berne Conven...