Free To Flourish

It is our great pleasure to introduce Arts+Labs, a collaboration of creative and technology communities with a common aspiration: a better, safer internet for all of us.

The internet has become our community, our marketplace, our digital neighborhood. The internet connects us to our friends, to culture, to entertainment, to ideas, to the entire world. But the internet doesn't just bring the world to us; it also brings each of us to the world.

As creators and as consumers, each of us should be free to participate and prosper online.

Arts+Labs believes the internet has transformed the world in which we live and it will continue to do so. But in order for this great network of networks to flourish, we must allow new business models to proliferate, to prosper or fail within a market that respects the rights of both the creators and the consumers.

Arts+Labs believes, as most consumers do, that creators should be fairly compensated for their work - that their rights should be protected and their creativity rewarded. Arts+Labs also believes consumers should have fast, reliable access to safe, legal and affordable content. Finally, Arts+Labs believes both the creators and consumers deserve protection from net pollution - the illegal file trafficking, spam, malware and computer viruses that threaten to congest the networks, harm our computers and slow the internet for all of us. Accomplishing all of this will take smarter networks, creative networks, free to adapt, to try new business models, to compete and to satisfy you.

To reach that goal we need to move beyond polemics and sound bites and focus our energy on conversation and competition. We intend to join that conversation, and as both consumers and creators, we look forward to the competition that will bring us a better internet - an internet that is safe, legal and everywhere.