Europeana Stutters into Life

Europeana, the European digital cultural database launched this month was immediately swamped and brought down by the demand on the service. The service now plans to be back ‘bigger and better’ by mid-December.

Europeana contains 2 million digitised books, audio and film material, photos, paintings, maps, manuscripts, newspapers and archival documents from more than 1,000 European cultural organisations such as that British Library. It plans to have over 10 million items in its database by 2010.

The main driver of the service according to a European Commission spokes person is to, ‘help save orphan books from oblivion...Forty per cent of the British Library is orphan - it’s not just a small phenomenon. There is a twentieth century cultural black hole as there is a huge amount copyrighted and orphan books. The question is what can one do about these out of print works? We may lose them from the cultural heritage.”

So we have a ‘cultural’ land grab by the establishment of Europe. We can’t help but say that appears no different than libraries sharing material today and lending this to users. As long as it stays within a ‘fair use’ remit and is not commercially exploited then this is different to the commercial land grab by Google and the US Orphan Act which are about legitimising the commercial adoption of orphans.

The question is whether others will see it the same or as legitimising the Great Book Robbery being performed by Google.

Some Good News From Washington This Week

The Credit crunch and bail out of the US banking system is bad news but it has given us some good news. Due to the emergency rush to pass the $700 billion bailout legislation the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 has had to be dropped.

Last week the Senate passed the bill but the rescheduling of the House of Representatives means that it will not be take up until after the election.

The act changes the rules by which works whose owners can’t be located can effectively be ‘land grabbed’ with a ‘we tried to contact them’ post it note. We believe as others that this quick adoption encourages infringement. It could be viewed as a licence to ‘scan first and ask later’ and as more people look to republish older works it makes that ‘grey’ area between public domain and in print even more inviting.

Adopting 'Orphan' Works

Having now written 400 entries in this blog we felt it appropriate to return to that often under reported and confusing issue of the US Orphan Act. We first raised this issue in the Brave New World report some two years ago and the Orphan Works Act of 2008 has since made progress through both the House and Senate. The Bill attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted.

Let’s remind ourselves of the problem that is trying to be solved.

You want to use a piece of old film footage or a photograph that contains no copyright information. You attempt to ascertain the owner but to no avail, so you use it, it is a success and then, comes the lawsuit. The picture might be an "orphan," one without a “parent” or copyright holder. After all artists die, publishers go out of business, some people never registered their work and it can often be impossible to locate the owner.

To qualify for this protection under the act, the new user must perform (and document) their "good faith" search and show that they could not locate them. They must file a "Notice of Use" with the Copyright Office and provide attribution about the original copyright owner, if they can find this information. They must also include a special "orphan works" symbol.

Lets step back from the legal implications and understand the massive issue that are at stake and the respective agreements from both sides.
First the statement made by The US Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, to Congress in March this year.


Second a blog by Nick Anderson, the editorial cartoonist with the Houston Chronicle in his blog last week and whose Cartoon captures his thoughts.

Technology is exploding the previous restrictions on how and what we could do with content in many forms. It is now bringing all the works ever written, drawn, painted, photographed, recorded and filmed to each and everyone of us. Many will be public domain and available to be used, others will be still available and clearly defined in terms of ownership and there will be many, some would argue the majority, that live in a grey area where ownership is unclear or not easily resolvable. Today one of the greatest challenges to digitisation on even current works is that not all rights can be digitally cleared against a work. So it is fair to assume that going back is going to get murkier.

We may not agree with all of the agreements from either side but in a world where land grabbing is often the norm and creator earnings are not guaranteed we should always focus on the side of the creator.