Page:The digital public domain.pdf/108



Without the intermediation of performers and producers of audio and video recordings, a huge stock of creative works which have entered the public domain after the expiration of the copyright protection term  will never become available to the public in digital formats as a free resource. This chapter identifies such “free resources” as “commons”; they are a resource which anyone within the relevant community has a right to access without having to obtain anyone else’s permission. There are types of creative works (for example, musical works or theatrical plays) whose effective dedication to the public domain for the benefit of the public at large would never reach the full status of commons if digitized performances of these works were not disseminated under open access licences. The term “open access” indicates different initiatives, ranging from “open source” to “commons”  that have flourished  following the creation of open-source software, and which have spread beyond the world of software. These commons-based initiatives  share the objective of guaranteeing the