WG3: Libraries, museums and archives (MEMORY)

WG3 studies the specific issues that memory institutions, namely libraries, museums, archives (including audio-visual archives) - whether public or private and independently of the specific type of works they collect - have to deal with when confronted with the public domain and more particularly with the public domain of digital works or works for which digitalisation is feasible and probable. WG3 will also conduct analysis on "bottom-up" archiving of works performed by volunteers, made possible by massively distributed collaboration technologies such as Wikis and other Internet- and Web-based platforms. Another strand of research of WG3 relates to the grey area between the pure public domain and copyrighted works for which the rights holders wish to severely limit redistribution, namely works released under "sharing" licensing frameworks such as Creative Commons licenses. The issues is further complicated by the fact that libraries and archives are often vested with the particularly important duty to disseminate knowledge and culture, in its various forms, irrespective of the wishes of the rights holders. In this sense, WG3's analysis will focus on the way in which public policies and the law handles the delicate balance between the role of libraries, museums and archives, the protection that copyright law grants to rights holders and the promotion (or lack thereof) of the public domain.