"Economies of the Commons - Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online" is an International Working Conference in Amsterdam & Hilversum 10, 11 & 12 April 2008. De Balie in Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, in collaboration with Knowledgeland, Images for the Future, and Virtual Platform, organise a two-day international public working conference on the economies, sustainability, and opportunities for creative reuse of these public audiovisual resources and archives.

The Economies of the Commons conference will focus on three core issues: strategies for sustainability, new modes of value creation, and the potentials for creative reuse around the digital commons. Our main questions are:
- What kinds of strategies are available to facilitate the growth of these emerging public knowledge resources, and guarantee their longer-term sustainability?
- How is value created around the emerging digital commons, and how can this value be capitalised on for the public good?
- How can these resources be activated as a creative productive force for contemporary culture, and how can the reuse of these enormously rich resources be facilitated and stimulated?

The conference brings together a highly international group of specialists, including Peter Kaufman (Intelligent Television), Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives), Roei Amit (INA), Kenneth Goldsmith (UbuWeb), Anthony McCann (Hallam University), Hubert Best (Best & Soames / FOCAL), Lucie Guibault (University of Amsterdam), Florian Schneider (Kein.tv) David Bollier (On The Commons), and many others.

The Economies of the Commons conference addresses a range of target groups that do not regularly meet each other. These include: (broadcast) media professionals, representatives from cultural heritage organisations, internet entrepreneurs, ethnomusicologists, musicians and representatives of the music industry, media activists, researchers in the domains of internet law, economy, information science, p2p file sharing activists, policy makers, and professionals from the field of art and culture.

A web dossier has been set up that provides further information on the conference program and side events, program updates, and information on speakers and highlighted case studies, as well as general background and research materials. This dossier can be found at:
www.ecommons.eu