Page:The digital public domain.pdf/80

Rh at the receiving end and transforming themselves into producers and distributors of works.

To make a long story short: both the production and distribution functions migrate from business to the public and there they can rely on excess resources available at each consumption unit. These, if individually of small scale, may be multiplied by very large numbers to provide almost infinite manufacturing and distribution capacity in a way that dwarfs past industry investments and makes them, to a large extent, redundant. The stage scenario is changing. Social sharing enters; business recedes. As a result, the long route from creators to the public may at some point become much shorter; and this is happening more and more all the time. Today creators set up their own websites and make books and music directly accessible to the public. Currently, user-generated content and social networks are growing exponentially: creators and their public are finally merging into each other.

2. The three requirements for a legislative agenda for the digital environment

What are the implications of this upheaval for the legislative agenda? Of course, we do not know much about the future. So much is changing all the time, and so quickly, that it is impossible to make predictions about the future. Nevertheless we can anticipate with some confidence that production and distribution of works will continue to originate from two different segments. The first is based on business and markets; the other on the production and distribution mode, which is based on decentralized