In questa pagina abbiamo iniziato a elencare alcune letture che a nostro avviso costituiscono una buona base di partenza per capire Internet: da Lessig a Benkler, da Rodotà a Aigrain.

Commons / pubblico dominio

• REPORT: Rufus Pollock, "The Value of the Public Domain", Institute for Public Policy Research (UK), 2006. This paper calls for a re-orientation of innovation and information policy. In our current paradigm, monopoly rights, in the form of intellectual property, displace all else from our thinking on this subject making access a peripheral issue. According to Pollock, it is high time we restored the balance, in particular by taking proper account of the public domain and open approaches to knowledge production.
• REPOSITORY: Digital Library Of The Commons, Indiana University.
• LIBRO: James Boyle, "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind", Yale University Press, 2009. Dispobile anche online con licenza CC.
• LIBRO: David Bollier, "Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own", New Press, 2009. (PDF scaricabile online)Viral Spiral is about the rise of free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses and the content commons they make possible, the internationalization of "free culture," and the burgeoning "sharing economy" that can be seen in open education, open science and open business models.
• LIBRO: a cura di Charlotte Hess e Elinor Ostrom, La conoscenza come bene comune. Dalla teoria alla pratica, edizione italiana a cura di Paolo Ferri, Bruno Mondadori, 2009.
• ARTICOLO: Charlotte Hess e Elinor Ostrom, "IDEAS, ARTIFACTS, AND FACILITIES: INFORMATION AS A COMMON-POOL RESOURCE", Cited: 66 Law & Contemp. Probs. 111, 2003.
• LIBRO: Philippe Aigrain, "Causa comune: L’informazione tra bene comune e proprietà", Stampa Alternativa, 2007 (PDF scaricabile online).
• LIBRO: Yochai Benkler, "La ricchezza della rete. La produzione sociale trasforma il mercato e aumenta le libertà", Università Bocconi, 2007. Sito italiano companion al libro, dove sono scaricabili diversi capitoli del libro. Versione inglese (scaricabile online nella sua interezza con licenza CC): sito dell'autore e sito della Yale University Press con sistema di annotazione online del testo.
• LIBRO: David Bollier, "Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth", Routledge, 2002.
  "A great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of dozens of resources that we collectively own. The plunder is widespread,affecting public lands, the broadcast airwaves, the Internet, the public domain of knowledge and creativity, publicly funded medicines, and even our genes. As companies quietly seize our common wealth, however, our government often fails to protect us, sometimes actually giving away our common assets. Silent Theft is a fresh and compelling critique of how private markets are eclipsing and “enclosing” the American commons. Bollier – a journalist, activist and public policy expert – not only documents the serious costs and consequences of runaway market activity, he develops a new language for understanding and reclaiming the commons. "
  

• ARTICOLO: Dan Bricklin, "The Cornucopia of the Commons: How to get volunteer labor", 2006.
• RAPPORTO: Thomas Rogers & Andrew Szamosszegi, FAIR USE IN THE U.S. ECONOMY: Economic Contribution of Industries Relying on Fair Use, CCIA, 2007. While policymakers pay much attention to copyrights, exceptions to copyright protection also promote innovation and are a major catalyst of U.S. economic growth. Specific exceptions to copyright protection under U.S. and international law, generally classified under the broad heading of Fair Use, are vital to any industries and stimulate growth across the economy. Companies benefiting from fair use generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006,represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP. Under guidelines published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), economic activity associated with copyrights has been studied extensively. To date, however, the economic contribution of industries dependent on fair use has not been quantified. Thus, a primary objective of this study is to fill the gap and provide an initial assessment of the economic contribution generated by companies benefiting from fair use. Fair use is an important restriction to the rights conferred on original works by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976: "The fair use of a copyrighted work ... is not an infringement of copyright." The fair use doctrine, and other limitations and exceptions, have grown in importance with the rise of the digital economy, as fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses and are an important foundation of the Internet economy. The beneficiaries of fair use encompass a broad range of companies, particularly those whose business activities involve the Internet, as well as consumers. The ubiquity of the Internet means that its benefits are widespread as well.

Commons e cyberlaw:

• LIBRO: Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy", 2008, Bloomsbury Academic (PDF rilasciato con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non Commerciale). La versione italiana, pubblicata da ETAS col titolo: "Remix. Il futuro del copyright (e delle nuove generazioni)", è stata pubblicata a settembre 2009.
• AUDIO: To hear Lawrence Lessig talk about his book Remix you can listen now to the NPR interview (37 min 51 sec).
• VIDEO: Lawrence Lessig presents "Remix" to students at New York University (video su YouTube, 1 ora e 5 minuti).
• LIBRO: Lawrence Lessig, "The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world" (2001); edizione italiana: "Il futuro delle idee", Feltrinelli, 2006.
• LIBRO: Lawrence Lessig, "Free Culture", The Penguin Press, 2004; edizione italiana: "Cultura libera. Un equilibrio fra anarchia e controllo, contro l'estremismo della proprietà intellettuale", Apogeo, 2005. Entrambe le edizioni sono liberamente accessibili online.

Neutralità della Rete

• PAGINA DI LINK: EDUCAUSE, Net Neutrality Resources.

File-sharing

• ARTICOLO: Volker Grassmuck, "The World Is Going Flat(-Rate)", 2009. Traduzione italiana a cura del Centro NEXA: "Il mondo sta andando verso il flat rate" (settembre 2009).
• ARTICOLO: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, "File Sharing and Copyright", working paper, Harvard Business School, 2009.
• ARTICOLO: Mark Cooper, "Round #1 Of The Digital Intellectual Property Wars: Economic Fundamentals, Not Piracy, Explain How Consumers And Artists Won In The Music Sector", Stanford University, 2009. ABSTRACT. Piracy may have been the solvent that dissolved the glue of an anticompetitive, anti-consumer market structure, but its magnitude has been vastly overestimated by the industry and the transformation of the industry is perfectly consistent with economic theory. With the advent of digital technologies, three quarters of the cost of producing a CD come under severe pressure. The fixed costs of distribution all but disappear and intermediary functions of promotion are transformed. The effort by record companies to keep singles out of the market and to keep CD prices high was a bald effort to use market power to prevent consumers from enjoying the benefits of more efficient distribution that would flow to them in a competitive market. The benefits were huge. The number of units purchased by the public has more than tripled – but the vast majority of units sold are singles and most are not owned by record companies. The average price per unit shipped has declined by 70 percent. Gains in consumer surplus are close to $6 billion in 2007 alone. The vast majority of artists were beneficiaries as well. Comparing the sales claimed by record companies to the sales claimed by digital distribution companies, it appears that for every single sold by a record company there are three additional songs sold by an unsigned artist. Of course, the dominant firms in the tight, music oligopoly and the handful of artists who benefits from the blockbuster/star system have suffered a reduction in the rents they collect.
• ARTICOLO: Jacqui Cheng, "Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right", Ars Tecnica, 2009. Those who download "free" music from P2P networks are more likely to spend money on legit downloads than those who are squeaky clean, according to a new report out of Norway. The music labels, however, aren't quite buying that data.
• ARTICOLO: Ken Fisher, "Study: P2P users buy more music; apathy, not piracy, the problem", Ars Tecnica, 2006. A new study shows that several of the fundamental assertions of the recording industry are without merit, as the relationship between album sales, piracy, and demographics reveals a more complex picture.
• ARTICOLO: New York Times, "Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing", 2009;
• ARTICOLO: NEXA Center for Internet & Society, "Creatività remunerata, conoscenza liberata: file sharing e licenze collettive estese", 2009;
• LIBRO: Philippe Aigrain, "Internet & Création", ILV Edition, 2008. Scaricabile online con licenza CC.
• RAPPORTO: Electronic Frontier Foundation, "A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing", April 2008;
• LIBRO: William Fisher, "Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment", Stanford University Press, 2004;
• ARTICOLO: Neil W. Netanel, "Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy to Allow Free Peer-to-Peer File Sharing". As published in Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 17, December 2003. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=468180 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.468180

Public Sector Information

• PORTAL: European Commission, Portal: Public Sector Information - Raw Data for New Services and Products.
• REPORT: OECD, "Digital Broadband Content: Public Sector Information and Content", 2006.
• LIBRO: Georg Aichholzer and Herbert Burkert (editors), "Public Sector Information In The Digital Age: Between Markets, Public Management And Citizens' Rights", Edward Elgar, 2005.
  'The public sector is the largest producer of information and the Internet could provide ubiquitous access to it. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the issues at stake. Its comparative approach reveals the diverse frameworks for access to public sector information in Europe and the United States. Case studies and a thorough discussion of principal policy options and potential goal conflicts provide a framework for facing the challenges ahead.' - Johannes M. Bauer, Michigan State University, US This timely volume reviews key issues and developments in the controversial area of public sector information (PSI). It addresses the fundamental themes, challenges and conflicts surrounding the access to, and use of, PSI in the new digital era. Using detailed empirical analyses and case studies from across Europe and the USA, the authors focus on the crucial policy, economic, legal and social issues. The public sector is the biggest single producer and holder of information including administrative and government documents, regulatory texts, political data and public registers. The authors demonstrate that this huge store of information is a key resource for a broad range of stakeholders such as citizens, civic organisations, private businesses and public sector agencies. They argue that charging the marginal cost of dissemination, a policy favoured in the US, will lead to optimal economic growth in society and will far outweigh the immediate perceived benefits of aggressive cost recovery. They illustrate how open government information policies create significant economic advantages to society and are beneficial in both the short and long term for the general public, the private sector and for governments themselves. This is one of the first books devoted to addressing the new challenges of access to PSI and the role of public policy. The international contributors, including leading experts from Europe and US, have produced an informative and coherent resource that will be of interest to scholars, students and decision-makers working in the fields of public policy, economics, political science, law and information technology.

Internet e democrazia

• RACCOMANDAZIONE DEL PARLAMENTO EUROPEO: "European Parliament recommendation of 26 March 2009 to the Council on strengthening security and fundamental freedoms on the Internet". Interessante anche l'"Explanatory Statement" con cui il MEP Stavros Lambridinis ha presentato la proposta in Commissione Cultura e Educazione.
• LIBRO: Ithiel de Sola Pool, "Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age", Harvard University Press, 1983, ISBN 0674872339, 9780674872332. Libro strepitoso. Esiste un'edizione italiana UTET, ma e' fuori commercio da anni.
• LIBRO: Stefano Rodotà, "Tecnopolitica. La democrazia e le nuove tecnologie della comunicazione", Laterza, 2004.
• LIBRO: Stefano Rodotà, "Tecnologie e diritti", Il Mulino, 1995.

Internet e libertà di espressione

• RAPPORTO: Freedom House, "Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media", March 2009.

Anonimato in rete

• RACCOMANDAZIONE DEL GRUPPO "ART. 29" PER LA TUTELA DEI DATI PERSONALI: Anonimato su Internet, n. 3/1997, 3 dicembre 1997 (qui nella versione in inglese).
• DOCUMENTO DI LAVORO DEL GRUPPO "ART. 29": Tutela della vita privata su Internet - Un approccio integrato dell'EU alla protezione dei dati on-line, 21 novembre 2000.
• LIBRO: C.Nicoll, J.E.J. Prins, M.J.M. van Dellen (editors), Digital Anonimity and the Law. Tensions and Dimensions, ITeR, The Hague, 2003.
• LIBRO: Giusella Finocchiaro (a cura di), Diritto all'anonimato: anonimato, nome e identità personale, Cedam, Padova, 2008.
• ARTICOLO: Stefano Rodotà, Proprietà, Privacy e Pornografia, le tre "P" di Internet, Problemi dell'informazione, 2001, fasc. 2-3, pp. 238–243.
• ARTICOLO: Sofia Celeste, Want to check your e-mail in Italy? Bring your passport, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 October 2005.
• ARTICOLO: Daniel J. Solove, "I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289. Available at SSRN.
• CONCLUSIONI DEL CONSIGLIO D'EUROPA: Council Conclusions on a Concerted Work Strategy and Practical Measures Against Cybercrime, 2987th Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting, Brussels, 27-28 November 2008.

Statistiche su Internet

• OECD: OECD Broadband Portal.
• ISTAT: Cittadini e nuove tecnologie, anno di riferimento: 2008, diffuso il 27 febbraio 2009. Le informazioni presentate oggi sono tratte dall’indagine “Aspetti della vita quotidiana” svolta nel febbraio 2008 e riguardano: la disponibilità presso le famiglie delle nuove tecnologie, il loro utilizzo da parte degli individui, le attività svolte con Internet, il web come strumento per comunicare e l'e-commerce.