The European Commission (EC) has adopted a ‘Communication on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy’ aiming to tackle the important cultural and legal challenges of mass-scale digitisation and dissemination of books, in particular of European library collections. The Communication was jointly drawn up by Commissioners Charlie McCreevy and Viviane Reding.
Digital libraries such as Europeana will provide researchers and consumers across Europe with new ways to gain access to knowledge. For this, however, the EU will need to find a solution for orphan works, whose uncertain copyright status means they often cannot be digitised. Improving the distribution and availability of works for persons with disabilities, particularly the visually impaired, is another cornerstone of the Communication.
Commissioners McCreevy and Reding stressed that the debate over the Google Books Settlement in the US once again had shown that Europe could not afford to be left behind on the digital frontier.
The Communication addresses the actions that the EC intends to launch: digital preservation and dissemination of scholarly and cultural material and of orphan works, as well as access to knowledge for persons with disabilities. The challenges identified by the EC stem from last year’s public consultation on a Green Paper, the EC’s High Level Group on Digital Libraries and the experiences gained with Europeana.
The EC will now hold talks to find viable solutions for simple and cost-efficient rights clearance covering mass-scale digitisation and the online dissemination of library collections still protected by copyright. This concerns both out-of-print works and orphan works.
The digitisation and dissemination of orphan works pose a particular cultural and economic challenge. The absence of a known rightholder means that users are unable to obtain the required authorisation. The EC will now examine this phenomenon more in detail via an impact assessment. The aim is for an EU-wide solution to facilitate the digitisation and dissemination of orphan works and the establishment of common 'due diligence' standards to recognise orphan status across the EU.
In addition, a stakeholder forum on the needs of disabled persons, in particular visually impaired persons, will examine policy responses, including ways to encourage the unencumbered EU trade of works in accessible formats.
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