Working Group 5

Scope:
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The public sphere is meant to designate all forms of public expressions in all
media by individuals or civil society groups, as well as the interaction
between this public space and democratic processes. The public sphere is a
major source of public domain and voluntarily shared material. If one
measures public domain contents by the time people allocate to its production
and usage, blogs and collaborative media represent a huge share of the
voluntary public domain.

Provisional Lead: Philippe Aigrain (co-lead will be defined in Zurich)

After discussion at the Amsterdam COMMUNIA workshop in October 2008, the workgroup has decided to focus for the time being on two tasks:

• Preparing and issuing an open call (to all interested parties) for position statements supportive of the public domain and voluntary information and knowledge sharing. Each position statement would address a given regulatory, policy or technology issue.
• Contributing to the work now undertaken by WG6 on "Mapping the public domain" (contents, structure, players and positions, specifics of jurisdictions)

The next meeting of WG5 is in Zurich (ETHZ), 23 January 2009 at the occasion of the 4th COMMUNIA workshop.

An earlier scope definition proposal for the WG is archived here.