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Rh of the US economy (Hollywood, Microsoft, Apple, pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, etc.). Most of the economic value created by those models has been harvested in places other than Europe. Moreover, the dominance of imported cultural paradigms and industries has increasingly propelled pernicious forms of cultural colonisation. The negative externalities are immense, especially in terms of impoverishment and the blurring of our cultural diversity. At the same time, an open, decentralised, networked model for creativity would boost cultural diversity at unprecedented levels. The rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe, coupled with a net deficiency of European intellectual property industries, makes the EU the ideal candidate to extract value from an open digital agenda and for successful deployment of cooperative, network-driven enterprises. Further, as previously noted, the European Internal Market may become a haven for fair use industries, thanks to the legal certainty of its predefined list of exceptions to copyright, as opposed to the unpredictable case-by-case fair use system of the US.

If Europe takes control of creativity in the digital environment, Europe will take full control of its future. However, the sole way for Europe to acquire this edge is to promote the immense cultural diversity that lies in the European public domain, as enhanced by the ubiquity and power of propagation of digitization. In order to do so, Europe needs to be innovative, creative and unafraid to challenge outdated and inefficient business models. It should fully empower the values of public participation, collaboration and innovation. When radical innovation become the new paradigm, the innovator will leapfrog ahead of former leaders who are incapable of changing fast enough, having been trapped by the strength and privileges of the traditional gatekeepers. Radical innovation is coming along regardless of the fact that the Aacien Régime, as Kroes has termed it, may attempt to retard its advent. As Joseph Schumpeter would have put it, to best leapfrog all of its competitors, the European Union should take the opportunity to go full sail out of the Digital Dark Age into the Digital Enlightenment, blown by the wind of creative change.