The Public Domain Manifesto
Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l’auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient le mot n’est pas trop vaste au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l’un des deux droits, le droit de l’écrivain et le droit de l’esprit humain, devait être sacrifié, ce serait, certes, le droit de l’écrivain, car l’intérêt public est notre préoccupation unique, et tous, je le déclare, doivent passer avant nous.[1]
Our markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech, and our art all depend more heavily on a public domain of freely available material than they do on the informational material that is covered by property rights. The public domain is not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The public domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It is, in fact, the majority of our culture.[2]
The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have decided to remove these barriers. It is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. The public domain acts as a protective mechanism that ensures that this raw material is available at its cost of reproduction—close to zero—and that all members of society can build upon it. Having a healthy and thriving public domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of our societies.
- ↑ “The book, in and as a book, belongs to the author, but as a thought, it belongs — and I am not overstating — to all humanity. All sentient beings have a right to that thought. If one of these two rights (the author’s right to the book and the people’s right to the thoughts) has to be sacrificed, this should be, for sure, the rights of the author. This is because the public good is our primary concern, and I declare this [as an author], the people’s rights come before ours.” Victor Hugo, Discours d’ouverture du Congrès littéraire international (Paris: Lévy, 1878). Translation by Derek Kerton.
- ↑ James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 40–41.
