Cultural Commons in the Digital Ecosystem

4The Written Commons in the Publishing Industry

The written commons are identifiable in the form of digital archives of written content, stored and made visible on platforms. They offer amateur writers new formats of writing practices associated with offers of intermediation services.

The rise of this type of platform is explained by some of the major transformations that the publishing industry is undergoing, as we will see in section 4.1.

However, not all of these platforms can claim such a written commons status, in the same way that not all amateur creative practices are part of free culture. Identifying the written commons in the digital book ecosystem involves turning our attention to what constitutes their purpose: the desire to foster the development of free culture promoted by the multitude of creative practices of amateur Internet users in the field of the written word.

Based on this preliminary observation, we have selected several platforms because of their potential eligibility for commons status, identifiable by the fact that they offer Internet users the possibility of sharing their digitized written content using a Creative Commons license.

In each of the cases studied, we will seek not only to rule on the eligibility of such platforms for written commons status, but also to study ways of cohabitation with the actors of the digital publishing sector.

4.1. The transformations of the editorial ecosystem

4.1.1. Digital textuality and new uses

Roger Chartier makes ...