Orphan Works Europe

June 16, 2008

In 2006 the EU announced an initiative called i2010 Digital Libraries Initiative. Its aim is to enable the digitisation of work held by cultural institutions, for the public good. However it also raised the problem of not being able to digitise some works because the authors could not be traced, ie. Orphan Works. Many countries within the EU have areas within their copyright law which addresses Orphan Works, however there is no harmonisation in this area and all have different solutions.

The Commission has now agreed a set of due diligence guidelines to be followed before a work could be classed as Orphan. The agreement covers such areas as music, audio visual, visual etc. The final guidelines were published and a Memorandum of Understanding signed by all the parties on June 4th 2008 at the Commission.