The Meme Commons License grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without infringing the author’s rights, and in exchange for a fair cut.

Far from ignoring these rights, the Meme Commons License recognizes and protects them. Their implementation has been reformulated in order to allow everyone to use creations of the human mind in a creative manner, regardless of their types and ways of expression.

While the public’s access to creations of the human mind usually is restricted by the implementation of copyright law, it is favored by the Meme Commons License.

This license intends to allow the use of a work’s resources; to establish new conditions for creating in order to increase creation opportunities. The Meme Commons License grants the right to use a work, and acknowledges the right holder’s and the user’s rights and responsibility. It is not intended to erase the rights of authors, but to create standardized terms of use that authors and other rights holders can use to share an original work or any other work protected by copyright and certain other rights specified in the Meme Commons license.

The invention and development of digital technologies, Internet and Free Software have changed creation methods: creations of the human mind can obviously be distributed, exchanged, and transformed. They allow to produce common works to which everyone can contribute to the benefit of all. However, the exploitation of these creations is generally done at the expense of the authors and right holders. This results in a loss of income that could be compensated by an obligation to pay an equitable remuneration –a fair cut– on the exploitation, to the authors and right holders.

If the majority of Free Licenses have the virtue of opening access to creative works, they do not seek to reconcile the interests of the different actors of creation. However, a license whose fundamentals are based on a balance of freedoms and interests would lead to a natural re-sharing of the value of creative works, and:

– would encourage authors to give freedom of use, copying, distribution and transformation of their creations;
– reward authors for their creative efforts;
– create new economic models that stimulate the creation, circulation, exchange and transformation of intellectual productions;
– create more incentives for authors and right holders to adopt exploitation modes based on these economic models, and not on a private monopoly restricting access to intellectual productions;

The main rationale for this Meme Commons License is to promote and protect these creations of the human mind according to certain principles of copyleft – freedom to use, copy, distribute, transform – with the counterpart of rewarding the right holders by a fair cut.

With the development of Blockchain technologies, crypto-assets, NFTs and metaverses, all digital content can now be valued. The search for a true sharing of value is therefore an essential criterion for creating a cultural economy based on the promotion and protection of intellectual productions according to the principles of copyleft.