Project description
Europeana and creativity
Framework for a EU-wide Audiovisual Orphan Works Registry.
The assessment of the rights status for audiovisual works is critical for their re-use in commercial distribution or for cultural and educational purposes, for example in the context of large digitization projects. Unfortunately, the rights status of such works is often unclear and very difficult to assess, making a significant amount of works inaccessible. The most relevant problem, making the whole issue on audiovisual rights in Europa so complicated, is the lack of a solid, structured and EU-wide information resources.
FORWARD wants to relief commercial entities, cultural institutions and all potential users of audiovisual work of this complexity by creating an automated system that will search, harvest and process information on audiovisual works. This way, users will be provided with an answer about the rights status of a precise work:
- Is it Orphan?
- Is it in Public Domain?
- Is it in-Copyright?
- Where can the rights be cleared?
This innovative and relevant project aims at a harmonised process in Europe on rights’ status definition, allowing a systematised and simplified access to a vast portion of Europe’s currently underused or unknown cultural assets.
The FORWARD and ARROW systems will be fully compatible and interacting realities, opening the possibility of further integration of Directive 2012/28/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on certain permitted uses of orphan works was adopted on 25 October 2012. The FORWARD project will be aimed at helping the implementation of the orphan works directive by Film Heritage Institutions. Definitions and workflow established by this Directive and its implementation by Member States will be taken on board by the FORWARD.
FORWARD aims at a comprehensive, effective approach to the complex issue of AV rights assessment and Orphan Works. Main project's goals are to: a) design and implement a EU-wide system to assess rights status (including Orphans) for all types of AV works by federating information resources of multiple national clearing centres; b) foster consensus among all stakeholders on key issues (as definitions of rights statuses, appropriate processes for diligent search, etc) thus facilitating progress on regulatory issues; c) solve interoperability problems among repositories, databases and registries across the EU so that all information required to define rights statuses are automatically harvested and processed; d) enable all stakeholders and users across the EU to assess the rights status of all AV works currently in a 'rights-limbo', thus enhancing access to and usage of a large portion of European AV content; e) establish and maintain a EU-wide Registry of AV Orphan Works and of diligent searches performed.These goals will be achieved by a strong collaboration of large national institutions that hold the largest information resources on AV works in their countries and representatives of all main stakeholders; the project will also build on the extensive expertise and experience of the ARROW projects, thanks to direct involvement of the ARROW project and partners.The FORWARD system will be designed, implemented and tested as a pilot application involving entities from 10 EU countries to be later expanded to all other potential partners in all other EU countries; it will be fully interoperable with ARROW and accessible to queries from all users across the EU.FORWARD will also foster standardization of AV rights metadata across the EU, and set up a structure ensuring that the system is maintained and expanded beyond the end of the project. The FORWARD and ARROW systems will be fully compatible and interacting realities, opening the possibility of further integrationDirective 2012/28/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on certain permitted uses of orphan works was adopted on 25 October 2012. The FORWARD project will be aimed at helping the implementation of the orphan works directive by Film Heritage Institutions. Definitions and workflow established by this Directive and its implementation by Member States will be taken on board by the FORWARD.
Call for proposal
CIP-ICT-PSP-2012-6
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
PB - Pilot Type BCoordinator
1000 BRUXELLES
Belgium