In the run-up to the European elections in the summer of 2024, we
offer seven proposals for policy interventions in support of the
Digital Commons. Building on the foundations laid by the regulation of
commercial platforms over the past five years, the policies presented
below aim to strengthen different forms of Digital Commons as building
blocks of the European Digital Public Space.
The development of Digital Commons is one of the greatest achievements
of the digital transformation of the last 25 years. New forms of
collaboration and sharing enabled by the internet have given rise to
digital resources that are created and managed by communities that
share them openly according to established rules, the open source
software industry, open-access research in the European Research Area,
Wikipedia, and open government data being prime examples.
Over the same period of time, Europe faced the challenge of the
growing power of commercial platforms that dominate the internet
today.
The initial vision of an open, non-commercial internet has been
replaced by a digital domain divided into closed communication
networks controlled by commercial actors. The original, interoperable
internet still functions as a basic communication layer. Yet
commercial networks built on top of it made users dependent on their
proprietary systems and solutions. The story of their growth is also a
story of extracting value from publicly available information and data
produced by users.
Large AI models developed by commercial entities that are trained by
scraping the publicly available internet and benefit from resources
such as Wikipedia are the latest iteration of the enclosure of the
Digital Commons. This is
the Paradox of Open:
while openness offers the strongest counterbalance to the corporate
enclosure of information and culture, it is also vulnerable to
exploitation and can even serve as an enabler of the concentration
of power.
Over the last five years, the European Commission has redefined its
approach to the Digital Single Market by introducing policies that
focus on safeguarding fundamental rights and European values.
Symptomatically, the flagship initiatives of the Commission’s
current digital policy package — the Digital Services Act and the
Digital Markets Act — regulate dominant platforms to protect
fundamental rights, create a safer digital space, and increase
competition in digital markets. These regulations address the above
paradox by reducing forms of exploitation, making commercial
platforms more accountable for the systemic risks they create, and
forcing at least a limited opening up of their services and
resources.
In parallel, the policies and regulations that give life to
Europe’s new data strategy are based on a vision of data
governance that balances the protection of rights with the flow and
reuse of data. New regulatory mechanisms create new opportunities
for data sharing, and Europe hopes to create open and interoperable
data spaces.
In other words, these policies create an opportunity to build an
internet that is not only a commercial marketplace but also
a Digital Public Space. This ambition has been recognized in the European Union’s
Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade,
which includes participation in the digital public sphere as one of
its key principles. This is an important declaration that paves the
way for new policies to ensure that digital technologies enable a
just and democratic society. Where fundamental freedoms and rights
are protected, strong public institutions work in the public
interest, and where people have a say in how services they depend on
work.
We believe that in the coming years, Europe will have the
opportunity to shape such a digital society. Building on the
foundations set by this Commission’s regulation of commercial
platforms, the next digital policy package needs to focus on
strengthening different forms of Digital Commons and protecting them
from exploitation.
