The public domain brings value to society. Cultural heritage
institutions safeguard public domain materials and have an opportunity
to make them accessible to everyone and facilitate their reuse, while
people have increased opportunities to remix and re-use existing content
in the creation of new works.
The Europeana Iniatitive has long supported the public domain via the Public Domain Charter,
and generally the openGLAM movement. However, many cultural heritage
institutions’ policies do not reflect these same principles. Challenges
still remain for institutions to ‘recognise’ the public domain status of
cultural heritage materials. There are various reasons, sometimes
related to funding, sometimes to an institutional mindset. This is
reflected in the collections available through Europeana.eu, some of
which contain content with inaccurate rights statements.
Article 14 of the CDSM Directive brings new opportunities to address
this. However, an obligation (top-down) approach might not lead to the
best results and we should continue to encourage cultural heritage
institutions to open up and be mindful of their struggles.
In addition, Article 14 of the CDSM only touches on aspects of the
public domain and digital cultural heritage; there are various areas
related to the public domain that can be interesting to explore,
including the boundaries between copyright and ethical reuse and digital
cultural heritage laws limiting the reuse of public domain material.
Objectives
The objectives of this Task Force will be to:
- Raise public awareness of both the letter and the spirit of
Article 14 of the CDSM Directive and of relevant developments in
relation to the public domain
- Defend and promote the principles in the Europeana Public Domain Charter
- Build the capacity and understanding of cultural heritage professionals in relation to Article 14
- Encourage improvement in Europeana.eu rights statements
so that they accurately reflect the public domain status of works
- Support users in overcoming challenges to the use of public domain materials
The Task Force is under the responsibility of the Europeana Copyright Community.