Cultural Commons in the Digital Ecosystem

Conclusion

Without an initial or over-determining position, we have explained the contemporary intellectual movement of the commons in the digital cultural ecosystem by identifying the places of production, the spaces of reflection and the lines of tension that characterize it. Our intellectual journey was guided by the search for enlightening answers to the following questions: What is a cultural commons? What is its identity? What are the characteristics of a cultural commons economy?

In the digital ecosystem, cultural commons are not easy to grasp. They are rarely named as such by their own “designers”. While they can be identified in the form of digital platforms, information infrastructures that share cultural resources produced by contributors, they are more than that. For they also refer to the institutional arrangements that promote the sharing and enrichment of these cultural resources (artistic, scientific, heritage, etc.). These institutional arrangements that address the conditions for sharing them and the nature of the community and associated governance are of paramount importance, as they allow cultural commons platforms to stand out in an essential way from the many so-called sharing or collaborative platforms that populate the digital ecosystem.

Cultural commons exist only through the action of contributing users who choose to share on a digital platform the product of their artistic and intellectual creation, or to contribute to the creation of a collective ...