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Every January a growing number of people throughout the world gathers to celebrate the new year. But not for the usual reasons. They meet because every January 1st the works of authors who had died decades before – typically, seventy years before – enter the public domain, that is, their copyright protection expires. Why a […]
The Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain by Séverine Dusollier (document CDIP/7/INF/2) has been discussed at WIPO CDIP/8 (Committee on Development and Intellectual Property). WIPO secretariat will prepare a document to provide more information on three of the recommendations contained in the study (namely recommendations 1.c., 1.f. and 2.a.) proposing […]
There is a new (dated 4 November 2011) note by the Polish presidency on two issues that have turned out to be controversial among the EU Member States in the negotiations about the Commission’s proposed orphan works directive. Both issues addressed in the presidency note have been identified by COMMUNIA in it’s policy paper on […]
Information Sans Frontières, a newly formed alliance from the library world (Europeana, JISC, LIBER and EBLIDA) has just released a memorandum on the proposed orphan works directive addressed to the Council of the European Union. The memorandum, backed by some of the the most obvious beneficiaries of the proposed directive is nevertheless highly of the […]
It is well known that sometimes you need to be an outsider to be able to analyze complex problems in a meaningful way. In the ongoing discussions about copyright in the digital environment Russian president Dmitry Medvedev might turn out to be the much-needed outsider. In the past Russia has not had a very strong […]
On the 28th of October the European Commission has adopted a recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation. This recommendation is following up on a similar recommendation from 2006. At the core of the recommendation is the request to the member states to step up their digitization efforts, pool their resources and involve private actors in […]
Beyond the wall between what is protected… and what is not. The question was raised in Berlin. The 1st Berlin Symposium on Internet and Society was held last week (October 25-28, 2011), on the occasion of the inauguration of the Humboldt University’s new multi-disciplinary Research Institute on Internet and Society (IIC, Institut für Internet and […]
Today the COMMUNIA International Association presents its first policy paper. The paper analyzes the European Commission’s proposed directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works (COM/2011/0289) in the light of its effects on the Public Domain. The paper contains suggestions for improving the directive to make it more suitable to the stated objective of increasing […]
Works that have fallen into the public domain after their term of copyright protection has elapsed can be freely used by everybody. In theory that means that these works can be reused by anyone for any purpose which includes commercial exploitation. In theory the public domain status increases access to our shared knowledge and culture […]
Join us in Warsaw before the CC Global Summit for a kickoff workshop that will bring together stakeholders to begin a global project to encourage GLAM institutions to make their metadata and digital copies of public domain works freely and openly available for all to reuse without restriction. Thursday, September 15, 2011 from 10:00 AM […]
