Rights holders and museums split over copyright issues for cultural content
The Commission has published an overview of the results of a consultation on its European Digital Library initiative, revealing divided opinions between cultural institutions and rights holders on copyright issues for cultural heritage content. In general, the 225 responses received by the Commission were welcoming of the European Digital Library initiative, with many seeing it as an opportunity to make Europe's cultural heritage more accessible and useable on the Internet. However, the consultation did reveal a divergence of views on the subject of copyright for cultural content, in particular between cultural institutions such as museums, libraries and archives on one hand, and rights holders themselves on the other. The Commission has already questioned the ability of Europe's content industries to remain globally competitive given the existence of 25 separate intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes across the Union. Despite the disagreement over copyrights, however, the consultation has helped the Commission to further define the set-up of the European Digital Library, it said. Building on the existing infrastructure of The European Library (TEL), it is expected that by 2008, two million books, films, photographs, manuscripts and other cultural works will be made available through the European Digital Library. This is expected to grow to six million by 2010, although the Commission says the final figure could be much higher. In order to support the digitisation of cultural content, the Commission has announced that it will co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide network of digitisation centres. It will also address IPR issues in a series of policy documents. 'Information technologies can enable you to tap into Europe's collective memory with a click of your mouse,' said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. 'The European Commission will help to turn this into reality by co-funding centres of competence for digitisation and providing a truly European framework for protecting, accessing and using intellectual property rights in digital libraries. Member States will have to do their bit by providing the basic means for digitisation.' A high level group on the European Digital Library has been established, made up of figures from industry and cultural institutions chaired by Commissioner Reding, and will meet for the first time on 27 March. 'This is a very exciting prospect for Europe's libraries and we are eager to make this happen,' concluded Elisabeth Niggemann, director general of the German national library and chair of the conference of European national libraries (CENL).