Economies of the Commons 2 - Paying the costs of making things free

www.ecommons.eu
International conference, seminar and public evening programs

Conference dates: 12-13 November 2010. De Balie, Amsterdam
Pre-conference: November 11. Hilversum (on collaboration with the Open Video
Alliance)

Economies of the Commons 2  is a critical examination of the economics of
on-line public domain and open access resources of  information, knowledge,
and media (the Œdigital commons¹).  The past 10 years have seen the rise of
a variety of such open content resources attracting millions of users,
sometimes on a daily basis. The impact of projects such as Wikipedia, Images
of the Future, and Europeana testify to the vibrancy of the new digital
public domain.  No longer left to the exclusive domains of digital
Œinsiders¹, open content resources are rapidly becoming widely used and
highly popular.

While protagonists of open content praise its low-cost accessibility and
collaborative structures, critics claim it undermines the established ³gate
keeping² functions of authors, the academy, and professional institutions
while lacking a reliable business model of its own. Economies  of the
Commons 2 provides a timely and crucial analysis of sustainable economic
models that can promote and safeguard the online public domain. We want to
find out what the new hybrid solutions are for archiving, access and reuse
of on-line content that can both create viable markets and serve the public
interest in a competitive global 21st century information economy.

Economies of the Commons 2 consists of an international seminar on Open
Video hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on November
11 in Hilversum, a two day international conference and two public evening
programs on November 12 and 13 at De Balie, centre for culture and politics
in Amsterdam. The event builds upon the successful Economies of the Commons
conference organised in April  2008.

Confirmed speakers include:

Charlotte Hess (Syracuse University ­ Keynote), Ben Moskowitz (Open Video
Alliance), Simona Levi (Free Culture Forum), Bas Savenije (KB National
library of the Netherlands), Yann Moulier Boutang (Multitudes), Peter B.
Kaufman (Intelligent Television), Harry Verwayen (Europeana), James Boyle
(Duke University), Jeff Ubois (DTN), Sandra Fauconnier (NIMK), Dymitri 
Kleiner (Telekommunisten), Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard (Royal Library
Denmark), Nathaniel Tkacz (University of Melbourne), a.o.

Organisers:

Images for the Future Consortium / Netherlands Institute for Sound and
Vision / De Balie / Institute of Network Cultures,  University of Amsterdam.

For detailed program information check our website:

www.ecommons.eu