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Today's digital networks offer extraordinary new opportunities for sharing and building upon our global, public pool of knowledge. Shedding light on the scientific, educational, economical, ethical and political importance of the digital public domain has, therefore, become crucial for the future of our knowledge-based societies.
This is the rationale behind a freshly launched project: COMMUNIA, the European Thematic Network on the Public Domain in the Digital Age.
Funded by the European Commission under the eContent+ programme and coordinated by the Politecnico di Torino's NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society, the three-year long project held its kick-off meeting in Turin, Italy, on 28 September 2007.
The project has been proposed by a network of 36 members from 21 countries who are dedicated to developing theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues to the public domain in the digital environment, as well as related topics including, but not limited to, alternative forms of licensing for creative material (including the Creative Commons licenses), open access to scientific publications and research results, and management of works with unknown authors (i.e. orphan works).
COMMUNIA is organizing a productive schedule of thematic workshops and conferences to be held in several European venues, with the goal of maintaining a strong link between participants. The network aims at producing both analytical and practical results, including the production of a book and an academic journal, a "best practices" guide for European research and reference centres and a final strategic report containing specific policy guidelines.
The overall goal is to create an open, wide, and active partnership aimed at improving knowledge access and to help all the stakeholders - public and private, from the local to the European level - tackling the issues that the existence of a digital public domain have raised and will undoubtedly continue to raise.
For more information, please visit the project website; questions,
comments, requests for information and/or clarification should be sent
to the Coordinator of COMMUNIA, Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin
European Commission page on COMMUNIA
http://www.ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/pr...
COMMUNIA project website
http://communia-project.eu
NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society
http://nexa.polito.it/
(contribution by Bernardo Parrella, COMMUNIA dissemination manager)