In from the cold

Orphan Works - works for which copyright holder is either unknown or untraced - present one of the most significant barriers in the provision of access to public sector content, to the detriment of the growth of the Knowledge Economy. Currently there is almost no systematic evidence of the scale of the Orphan Works problem. This lack of evidence is preventing public sector stakeholder communities from providing access to content with legal certainty, as well as preventing them from exploring potential solutions, whether legislatively or through collective approaches to licensing and indemnity.

The Collections Trust has initiated a project, in collaboration with the Strategic Content Alliance, "In from the Cold", with the aim of providing evidence of the impact of Orphan Works on the delivery of services to the public. The project involves the following three strands of activity:

* A series of interviews with senior stakeholders in the public sector
* An in-depth qualitative survey
* Online quantitative survey

So far, the online quantitative survey, the first of its kind, has yielded 503 responses from across the UK's public sector, as well as 10% of responses from abroad. 89% of survey respondents indicated that orphan works affect their public service delivery (to a greater or less extent) and the quantity of orphan works is estimated to be in the region of 5 - 10% of all works in the public sector (the figure for archives is significantly higher).

This presentation will focus in more depth on these results, the types of works likely to be orphans, as well as the various types of "value" associated with these works to assess the true impact of these works on public service delivery.

Policy Recommendations

* Public sector bodies should be provided with legal certainty to allow them to use orphan works together with due diligent searches without incurring risks or legal penalties
* Copyright exceptions should be fit for the digital age
* Copyright exceptions need to be enshrined in law and not over-ridden by contracts

Questo/a opera è pubblicato sotto una Licenza Creative Commons.