In a letter published in today's Times, the British Library, Tate, V&A, National Portrait Gallery, BFI, Wellcome Trust, Imperial War Museum, JISC and others are seeking to ensure the safe passage of Clause 42 of the government's Digital Economy Bill, which if passed will provide the UK with the best Orphan Works solution in the world, unlocking vast amounts of collections for the nation.
Perhaps 40% of some of our national institutions' collections are orphan works. [our emphasis] Restricting the digitisation of these works limits access and will leave a huge volume of historically important collections ‘in limbo'. A significant proportion of these were never originally intended for commercial use and should not be treated in the same way as commercially produced in-copyright orphan works.
In the view of these signatories, copyright collecting societies do have a major role to play in managing the copyright of known and commercially published rights holders. However, they are not the only institutions capable of acting responsibly in relation to Orphan Works.
The educational and cultural sectors also have a long history of respecting rights holders in the provision of access, combined with an unrivalled knowledge of the unique material that sits within their collections. The suggestion of an Orphan Works licence for such institutions, put forward under the Digital Economy Bill, would offer a flexible system enabling access to collections to be improved for the benefit of education and research around the world.
One example of Orphan Works are the thousands of photographs of British servicemen during the First and Second World Wars held by the British Library. These photographs have enormous value to researchers but there is no way of tracing the rights owner - which means the photographs cannot be digitised and made accessible. Other examples of Orphan Works held by libraries, archives, museums and galleries include oral histories, personal letters, films and drawings.
The Digital Economy Bill proposes a system that allows a cultural or educational organisation to apply for a licence for the use of these works. Such a flexible system is the right one given the types of works that fall into the category of Orphan Works.
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