As per each January 1st, COMMUNIA and its partners celebrate that new cultural works enter the Public Domain. In 2025, we celebrate the entry of many artists in the Public Domain such as Frida Kahlo, Colette, Matisse, and Virginia Woolf. To mark the occasion, we co-hosted this year’s Public Domain Day on January 9 at the Royal Library of Belgium.
Celebrating the Public Domain
As we state in our founding document, the Public Domain Manifesto, “the Public Domain is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection.” Everybody can use, reuse, modify, and adapt creative and cultural works in the Public Domain with or without commercial purposes. The Public Domain also supports current creators to dive into all ever-made cultural works in order to be inspired, and continue developing human creativity and knowledge in science, social or artistic fields.
Unfortunately, a large body of works in the public domain is still inaccessible. The reasons for this are manifold and were at the heart of the discussions at this year’s Public Domain Day. To overcome these barriers, many cultural and educational institutions professionals are working tirelessly to provide access to cultural collections in the Public Domain for researchers, educators, artists, writers, students and many other community members.
In order to celebrate their efforts, share collective experiences and best practices in opening up this material, COMMUNIA has co-organised the Public Domain Day 2025. With our local and international partners, we support and encourage the development of a strong Public Domain ecosystem as it gathers policy makers, cultural heritage practitioners, scholars and open knowledge community members.
The programme
This year’s Public Domain Day was opened by a keynote speech by professor Séverine Dusollier (University Professor and Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Law School Sciences Po, Paris) who gave an extensive introduction to the complicated field of the Public Domain and copyright. Professor Dusollier provided an overview of the used definitions of the Public Domain, shared difficulties in determining the duration of copyright protection and highlighted quirks of the Public Domain when dealing with multiple jurisdictions.
Following the keynote speech, participants had a choice to attend one of two tracks for the reminder of the morning session: A Belgian Track and a European Track.
The Belgian track, which was held mainly in Dutch, highlighted developments in the Public Domain in Belgium and beyond, revolving around showcasing recently unlocked Public Domain works and the (re)use of Public Domain material. The track started with a presentation by Piet Janssens from the Royal Library of Belgium, followed by Bart Magnus from Meemoo (Flemish Institute for the Archive). Musea Hasselt was represented by Inge Husken & the Rubenhuis by Saar Vandeweghe.
Meanwhile, the European track, held in Englisch, discussed some of the biggest limiting factors for the Public Domain in Europe and highlighted ongoing initiatives and projects at the European and international levels that aim to overcome these barriers.
- Starting off, the Europeana Copyright Community represented by Brigitte Vézina and Maarten Zeinstra presented the launch of a newly reviewed Public Domain Charter [video].
- Our very own Leander Nielbock, COMMUNIA, talked about access to public sector works and public speeches. These documents can be essential to the rule of law (legislation, court and administrative decisions), and are crucial for accountability and historical recordkeeping. As such, it should not be possible to protect these documents under copyright. Measures to address this shortcoming of current legislation should be included in a Digital Knowledge Act.
- Brigitte Vézina, Creative Commons, highlighted their new initiative with the TAROCH coalition, in order to advocate for a new UNESCO Recommendation on Open Culture [video].
- Paul Keller, Open Future Foundation, and Sebastiaan Posth, Liccium, presented their EU-funded pilot project aiming at developping EU Registry of Public Domain and Open Licensed works, named CommonsDB.
- Harrie Temminck, from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) introduced their work on the Public Domain & the upcoming EUIPO Copyright Knowledge Centre [video].
- Merete Sanderhoff, Staten Museum voor Kunst, and Jon Beck, Scan the World, shared with us insights on their projects to create 3D scans and make them available to all users [video].
- NivoPol from Le Deuxième Texte Association ran us through the immense work achieved by their organisation on bridging the gender gap, through Forgotten Public Domain Women Writers [video].
- Daffyd Tudur, National Library of Wales, delivered good practices to new professionals in their journey to opening up their collections [video].
The event also offered two workshops. The first one was led by Maarten Zeinstra on the Public Domain Calculator on Outofcopyright.eu. During this workshop,participants went over the changes in the Europeana Copyright Framework and assessed any other changes that might affect the term of protection, to update copyright decision trees for 2025.The second workshop was led by Francesca Farmer, Research Fellow at GLAM-E Lab based (RAMM), focused on supporting open GLAM participation among smaller collections holders and identifying and preparing digital collections for publication to Wikimedia Commons using the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Participants got to learn more about free tools available for the process as well as, policies and resources created by the GLAM-E Lab.
Finally, the audience got to learn about Label Culture Libre launched by Xavier Cailleau, Wikimedia France, promoting Cultural Heritage Institutions that have led the way towards achieving Public Domain’s aims.
All videos are available through Europeana’s Vimeo account.
Partners
Creative Commons, Europeana, Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), meemoo, Wikimedia Belgium, Wikimedia Europe