The Currency of the Commons – The Price and Value of Free Culture

In recent years, the free culture movement has been very much focused on the development of alternative rights and licensing systems. The development of appropriate economic benchmarks outside traditional business models are only now starting to gain traction: crowdsourcing, micro-funding and shared economy – these are the new watchwords of a society that no longer wants to rely solely on capitalist principles. In this context, however, there are many questions – how to convert ‘free’ cultural services into an economic currency, for example, or how a long-term culture of worth that is based on free access rather than supply and demand can be achieved.