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44 to European society at large. To that end, a European digital public library must be capable of including orphan works as well as access to information, sampling, and purchase of copyrighted in-print and out-of—print material.

Open access to scientific and academic publications and new business models, such as alternative remuneration systems and cultural flat rates that favour access and the reuse and remix of information, will be the tools of European cultural growth and enhanced creativity. As discussed at Communia meetings, networks of open knowledge environments may spread across European academic and public interest institutions. Open access will propel collaborative research and educational opportunities through interactive portals and functions such as wikis, forums, blogs, journals, post publication reviews, repositories and distributed computing.

In a modern, networked Europe, open and free public sector information, together with public domain material, will be the building blocks of our cumulative knowledge and innovation. Exceptions for scientific and academic purposes, open access to academic publications and easy remix promoted by alternative business models, will empower fast and efficient processing and reuse of other protected material while lowering transaction costs. A pan-European digital library will assure access to and widen the distribution of knowledge with the enhanced tools of computational analysis to foster new research opportunities, such as the digital humanities and genomics. Additionally, a digital public library will push forth the rediscovery of currently unused or inaccessible works, open up the riches of knowledge in formats that are accessible to persons with disabilities and empower a superior democratic process by favouring access regardless of users’ market power. It will be a perfectly efficient integrated environment for boosting knowledge, research, and follow-up innovation. The goal of the Digital Agenda—“to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast internet and interoperable applications”—perfectly supports this vision. Communia policy recommendations are meant to be one initial, but substantial, step towards making this vision come true.

Additionally, if we look at the traditional market for creativity, we can see that there is a considerable added value for Europe to invest in a lead role in the market for open and public domain business models. Businesses based on legacy intellectual property models have been the strength