EU begins consultation over digital copyright

The European Commission has begun a public consultation on the future of Europeana, the EU's multilingual digital archive, and the digitisation of books that will run until 15th November. The Commission has also declared as its target to bring the number of digitised "objects", held by Europeana. to 10 million by 2010.

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said: "The digitisation of books is a Herculean task but also opens up cultural content to millions of citizens in Europe and beyond. This is why I welcome first efforts made by Member States and their cultural institutions to fill the shelves of Europe's digital library." But she described as "alarming" the finding that "only 5% of all digitised books in the EU are available on Europeana" and that "almost half of Europeana's digitised works have come from one country alone"--France.

She said: "To me this shows, above all, that Member States must stop envying progress made in other continents and finally do their own homework. It also shows that Europeana alone will not suffice to put Europe on the digital map of the world. We need to work better together to make Europe's copyright framework fit for the digital age."

Europeana includes, for legal reasons, neither out-of print works (some 90% of the books in Europe's national libraries), nor orphan works (estimated at 10 – 20% of in-copyright collections) which are still in copyright but where the author cannot be identified.

According to the EC, the Europeana project showed that licensing of copyright-protected material in Europe still takes place under a very fragmented legal framework. Earlier this year a French aggregator had to withdraw photographs from Europeana, since it only had the right to disseminate the material on French territory.

Questions the Commission is asking as part of the consultation include: How can it be ensured that digitised material can be made available to consumers EU-wide? Should there be better cooperation with publishers with regard to in-copyright material? Would it be a good idea to create European registries for orphan and out-of print works? How should Europeana be financed in the long term?