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European booksellers and publishers have welcomed the decision by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to approve legislation improving access to orphan works whose copyright-holders cannot be found. By encouraging their digitisation, the move will potentially open up a vast swathe of books to libraries, museums and similar non-commercial organisations across Europe.
Although the new EU-wide rights are essentially restricted to public interest organisations, the publishing industry has hailed the fact there is now more legal certainty over the issue.
Anne Bergman-Tahon, director of the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), said the requirement for a diligent search to be made before a work could be used would prevent libraries and museums using the rights “in a cavalier way. It means that you can’t do it just like that; you can’t look at the books on a shelf, which look as if they are orphan and decide to digitise them and make them available and afterwards say you didn’t know.”
Jessica Sanger, legal counsel for German booksellers’ association Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, said the new directive was “a good compromise” and it would now be up to national legislators to transpose it into national laws. She added: “In Germany, a solution for orphan works is one step towards digitisation of library stocks. At the same time, we have developed solutions for the use of works which are out of commerce (but where rights-holders are known), and we hope that these will be enabled by law also.”
In London, Sydney Davies, head of trade and industry at the Booksellers Association said: “We have always been in favour of governments deciding what to do about orphan works; their availability should not be left up to private companies.”