The copyright paradox: an interview with Philippe Aigrain

The text reflects on the connections between cyber-rights, copyright and creativity. The Web is capable to collectively produce amazing amounts of cognitive wealth, as demonstrated by the case of Wikipedia and, more generally, by the whole Creative Commons ecology. But such abundance has to be protected through the organization of specialist networks capable of facing the menace of increasingly repressive legislations: treaties like ACTA, SOPA and HADOPI – fostered by companies that are not able to remodel their business model on an open source basis – are one of the worst menaces to contemporary freedom of expression. What kind of intellectual property reforms are needed in order to expand individual and collective freedom? How is it possible to think about new busi- ness models for the creative industries starting from open source and Creative Commons? How cyber-rights are changing? I collected the point of view of Philippe Aigrain, researcher and activists, co-founder of the French organization for digital freedom “La Quadrature du Net”.