Day 1 – Stand up for yourself!

Workshops

Day 1 – Monday 7 December Dish_groen Track 2: Stand up for yourself!

Shedding light on the 20th century black hole: the need for EU copyright reform
Lisette Kalshoven & Maarten Brinkerink

Maarten_BrinkerinkMaarten Brinkerink (1983) works at the R&D department of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as an expert in Public Participation and Innovative Access. He develops projects, strategies and policies that harness the power of technology, open access and participatory culture. In his work Maarten is driven to stimulate the dissemination, diversification and repurposing of audiovisual heritage.
” It’s not about how digital technology changes us, but how we change ourselves and one another now that we live so digitally. ” (Rushkoff, 2014)

CC BY 4.0, Giorgos Gripeos
CC BY 4.0, Giorgos Gripeos

Lisette Kalshoven is advisor at Kennisland in the areas of copyright, heritage and open education. She combines writing policy documents with practical interventions and training sessions for professionals. Creating access to information is always the reference point in her work. At Kennisland, amongst other things, she is the project lead of Europeana Sounds, a European project that aims to double the amount of audio files accessible through Europeana. She helps museums, archives and libraries create an open policy with regard to copyright in their collections, creating online access where possible.Copyright reform is a necessity. The 19th-century system is not coping well with our digital society, and is limiting citizens in legally accessing and reusing works not being exploited elsewhere. This is why Lisette works on strengthening the Public Domain via the COMMUNIA association, promoting copyright workarounds like Creative Commons licenses and giving talks on making copyright law understandable for laymen.”

“The copyright system is not coping well with our digital society, and has led us to a 20th century black hole of culture. This needs to change.”

Copyright law makes it difficult for cultural heritage institutions to fulfill their public mission: creating access to heritage. While many institutions are trying their best in rights clearance practices, digitisation efforts and on-site availability a staggering number of (even digitised) heritage is not yet available online. Working within the current copyright system is not acceptable. Thankfully we have a window of opportunity in the EU to reform copyright.

In this workshop at DISH Maarten Brinkerink (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision) and Lisette Kalshoven (Kennisland) will discuss the barriers to online access for cultural heritage institutions; leading to what we now have: a 20th century black hole. Working from experience in projects like Images for the Future, Open Culture Data, Open Images, COMMUNIA and Europeana Sounds, Maarten en Lisette will discuss the following topics with the audience, creating a shared learning space:

  • What is the data: what do we as a sector have online now, and what is the potential we can unlock by making access to heritage greater?
  • What has been the process for EU copyright reform up until now: what have been the struggles, and what have been the wins for cultural heritage institutions?
  • What has been the engagement of cultural heritage institutions in this debate: what has been done, and what has worked well?
  • What can we do now to influence EU policy so that heritage institutions can have the online manoeuvrability to fulfil their mission of creating access to heritage?