Showing posts with label Europeana Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europeana Foundation. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Keeping digitised works in the public domain: how the copyright directive makes it a reality; Europeana Pro, January 21, 2020

Andrea Wallace, Ariadna Matas, Europeana Pro; Keeping digitised works in the public domain: how the copyright directive makes it a reality

"The principle that works in the public domain should remain in the public domain once digitised, which Europeana has defended for almost ten years, was recently incorporated into European law. In this post, we interview Andrea Wallace, Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter, about the importance of this provision for the cultural heritage sector and her research on Article 14.


For several years, Europeana – through its policies, standards, and communications – has advocated against the practice of institutions using Creative Commons licences on digital copies or surrogates of a work, when the original is out of copyright and they are neither the creators nor rightsholders. Our Public Domain Charter establishes that in order to achieve a healthy and thriving public domain, digitising a public domain work should not take it back to being protected and non-reusable. There is a danger of undermining the public domain, a central principle in copyright law.

After working to raise awareness on the issue, Europeana celebrates the adoption of Article 14 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. This provision establishes that works of visual arts in the public domain shall remain in the public domain once digitised, unless the digitisation is original enough that it can attract copyright protection. All 28 member states will have to adopt it and make it national law (by June 2021). Andrea Wallace, together with Ellen Euler, has been researching the Article and its implications.

What issue is Article 14 trying to address?

Article 14 confronts the long-standing practice of claiming a copyright in non-original reproductions of public domain works. To attract protection, a work has to be sufficiently 'original' under copyright law. For a while now, there has been a lack of binding legal authority on whether reproductions of public domain works, like photographs of public domain paintings, are original enough to attract their own copyright. 

Because of this, cultural heritage institutions, picture library agencies, and other owners have been able to build business models around claiming copyright in public domain reproductions and charging the public a fee to use the images. But this has the effect of excluding the public from accessing out-of-copyright artworks, and it contradicts the rationale underlying the expiration of copyright and a work passing into the public domain. The public domain should be available for everyone to use for whatever purpose: to make new cultural goods, generate new knowledge, and so on."

Monday, November 25, 2013

BBC throws weight behind open data movement; Telegraph, 11/25/13

Sophie Curtis, Telegraph; BBC throws weight behind open data movement: "The BBC has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the Europeana Foundation, the Open Data Institute, the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation, supporting free and open internet technologies... The agreements will enable closer collaboration between the BBC and each of the four organisations on a range of mutual interests, including the release of structured open data and the use of open standards in web development, according to the BBC."