Page:The digital public domain.pdf/70

Rh open access to research and public sector information; (5) and promote new business models to enhance creativity, including alternative remuneration systems and a cultural flat rate.

A politics of the public domain is needed to protect our intellectual domain as much as a strategy for national security is required to protect our physical home. Lange has argued that we are all citizens of the public domain. The public domain is our country and our home. Enclosure and propertisation of the public domain correspond to depriving citizens of their country and homes. Any policy oriented to the enhancement of creativity should be respectful of our citizenship of the public domain and should nourish, protect, and promote it.

A stronger public domain will make Europe stronger and richer. It will help the region earn a central and crucial place in fostering new creativity. The ability to promote new creativity will allow Europe to appropriate unexplored social and economic value that lies in the digital realm and raise income levels across the continent.

The European advantage in promoting the public domain can be seen from multiple angles. Firstly, much value is still to be extracted from public sector information, if compared to other jurisdictions. Europe is a late entry in the market for public sector information. According to estimates, 7% of the United States GDP is coming from public sector information, whereas only 0.5% of European Union GDP is coming from that source. Several studies have highlighted that a public domain approach to weather, geographical data, and public sector information in general, may yield a substantial long-term value for Europe, running into the tens of billions or hundreds of billions of euros. Open access to public sector information will entail a considerable added value for the European market.

A stronger public domain will also help Europe to achieve its goal of creating a European digital public library. The Europeana platform is up and running. This is the only international project of its kind. Other jurisdictions are in the process of abdicating their public role in developing digital libraries and digitization projects to private parties. This is not the European vision. Europe values public interest and full public access above all. However, in order not to lag behind private projects, such as Google Books, and suffer from negative network effects, Europe should strive to build a digital public library that can fully unlock the riches of digitization