The Public Report is the outcome of the work of the COMMUNIA Network on the Digital Public Domain. This Report was undertaken to (i) review the activities of COMMUNIA; (ii) investigate the state of the digital public domain in Europe; and (iii) recommend policy strategies for enhancing a healthy public domain and making digital content in Europe more accessible and usable. This document incorporates the results of several months of discussions among COMMUNIA members.

About Communia

The COMMUNIA Thematic Network has been working for over three years at becoming a European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment – as well as related topics, including, but not limited to, alternative forms of licensing for creative material; open access to scientific publications and research results; management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works).

Funded by the European Commission within the eContentplus framework, the 3-years long project expects to provide policy guidelines that will help each stakeholder involved – public and private, from the local to the European and global level.

The core of the network is represented by its members.
The founding members are 36, with five more members added in September 2008, and ten more added at beginning of the third year (September 2009) – for a total of 51 members.

COMMUNIA is also building strategic relationships with other non-European countries (starting with the United States and Brazil, where two COMMUNIA members are located) in which similar policy discussions are currently underway.

COMMUNIA is coordinated by the Politecnico of Torino‘s NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society. It started its activities on 2007 and ended on 2011.