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The global summit of the Creative Commons movement opened in Toronto on April 28 with keynote speakers including Alek Tarkowski (pictured above) from Poland (venue of the 2011 summit). Several hundred guests from around the world have gathered at Toronto's Delta Hotel to plan the future of a growing worldwide initiative to make open intellectual, resources available to all. As an example of the openness of the Creative Commons idea Tarkowski recounted how in 2004, as a young man from Poland he was accepted as a contributor to the struggle for copyright reform through the development of open licensing. Though the creative commons movement started with the impulse to make knowledge available to all in an Internet linked world TorontotheBetter welcomes its growth as a stimulus to, and a model for, more holistically inclusive social and economic development worldwide.

Since the eighteenth century the world has undergone ongoing struggles against the socially and economically excluding forces of enclosure and here in Ontario, three centuries later, we witness new examples of continuing privatization/enclosure such as the Ontario government's recent sell-off of public hydro resources. Commons offer a path that can avoid the recently all too obvious costs, including inequality, pollution and waste, of market-centred development models. As the right to Internet access continues its journey, hopefully inevitable, towards acceptance as a basic human right, TorontotheBetter recognizes the presence in our city of the Creative Commons summit as a marker in this city's Toronto's evolution as a holistic social economy. Through our website, www.TorontotheBetter.net and related activities we renew our commitment to the task of progressive city building.

Toronto the Good: not so. TorontotheBetter: better.