Panel

Cross-border extended collective licensing: a solution to online dissemination of Europe's cultural heritage?

To the extent that books, photographs and other items in the collections of libraries and other cultural institutions are protected by copyright, they cannot be disseminated online without prior permission from the copyright owners. This applies to most items created during the 20th century. However, the transaction costs of finding and negotiating a license with every copyright owner would rise to paramount levels. In cases where it is impossible to identify or locate the right holder ("orphan work"), the items cannot be made available at all. These challenges hamper the development of initiatives aiming at digitizing and making available online the collections of cultural institutions and services like Europeana.

A way forward is the Nordic extended collective licensing (ECL) model. The model extends an agreement between a Collective Management Organization (CMO) and a user also non-members of the organization. In this way many of the transaction costs can be drastically reduced. The model has many similarities with the so-called Google Book settlement, but a major difference is that it is based on statutory law.

However, according to traditional copyright principles rights for online dissemination have to be obtained for every country where the content can be accessed. A solution is to combine a national ECL provision with a principle of country-of-transmission. In this way an institution would only have to agree an ECL license with a domestic CMO but could make its collections available cross-border.

Against this background, the panel will discuss the pros and cons of an ECL cross-border model in relation to the digitization and online dissemination of the collections held by national cultural institutions. The panelists represent different interests (stakeholders).

Download the full panel abstract

Organisers

• Johan Axhamn, Faculty of Law, Stockholm University, SE
• Patrick Peiffer, Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg, LU
• Paul Keller, Nederland Kennisland, NL

Organised with the support of the National Library of Luxembourg.

Moderator

Patrick Peiffer is project manager for the Services électroniques at the National Library of Luxembourg, managing licences for the national consortium and specialising in copyright issues, currently for retro-digitisation of newspapers and digital legal deposit. He is member of the EU Member States Expert Group on Digitisation and within the EuropeanaConnect project, task leader for the Europeana Licensing Framework.

Panelists

Annemarie Beunen is the copyright lawyer of the National Library of the Netherlands, and an assistant professor at Leiden University (department of eLaw). Here, she lectures and publishes on copyright issues relating to digitised cultural heritage. Annemarie read Dutch Law (specializing in copyright) and History of Art at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands. In 2007 in Leiden, she finished her PhD thesis on the sui generis protection for database producers under the European Database Directive. In 1999-2000 she edited the first Dutch legal guidebook for museums. She also held former positions at the Dutch Council for Culture, and the Dutch Council of State.

Johan Axhamn is a PhD candidate in intellectual property law at the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University, where he conducts research and is a teacher in intellectual property law. His PhD project deals with the EU database directive, especially the sui generis database right and its interfaces with competition law and fundamental rights. Between November 2010 and May 2011 Johan conducted research at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam on the Nordic ECL model in relation to the Europeana project. This research has resulted in a EuropeanaConnect ECL report on practical solutions for cross-border access, available in Q3 2011. Johan is a former special adviser to the Ministry of Justice in Sweden, with special focus on copyright and enforcement issues and is currently Sweden's expert and delegate to the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore.

Silke von Lewinski is tenured at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Munich and specialises in international and European copyright law. She is also an adjunct professor at Franklin Pierce Center for IP at the University of New Hampshire Law School, Concord, N.H., USA. Dr. von Lewinski frequently has been an expert consulting the European Commission, e.g. on the EC Rental Rights Directive, and regarding the WIPO Diplomatic Conference 1996. At the WIPO Diplomatic Conference 2000 on Audiovisual Performances, she was a delegate for Germany. She has been the chief legal expert consulting the governments of Eastern and Central European and former Soviet countries on their copyright legislation in the framework of the initial EC's TA programs from 1995 and works under subsequent programs, including in Asia. Numerous publications and lectures worldwide have focussed on copyright law, primarily international and European. Her professional memberships include ATRIP, Executive Committee of ALAI international, Vice President of ALAI's German group, Advisory Council of IP (ACIP) at Franklin Pierce Center for IP; Editorial Board of the Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA.

Mette Møller is the Secretary General of the Norwegian Authors' Union. She graduated from the University of Oslo in 1991 and has worked within the copyright field ever since. Møller participated in the working group for the test case to bokhylla.no ("Bookshelf"), a project aiming at making all Norwegian books from the 1790s, 1890s and 1990s available on the Internet. To the extent that books are still under copyright, they are encompassed by an extended collective licensing agreement between the Norwegian collective management organization Kopinor and the National Library of Norway. Møller has followed bokhylla.no closely since it was launched in 2009. Møller also has experience from working at the Norwegian Ministry of Cultural Affairs with copyright policy issues in both a Nordic and European framework, contributing to a revision of the Norwegian Copyright Act in 1995. She has also worked as a Legal Manager at Norwaco (a collective management organization clearing rights and collecting remuneration for retransmission of broadcasting signals with legal basis in an extended collective license agreement). Between 1996 and 2006 she worked as an IPR business lawyer. Between 2005 and 2009 she was a Board member of the Norwegian Film Fund.