Cultural heritage in the digital world

• Author: Jaime de Mendoza Fernández
• Position: Head, Copyright Unit, Ministry of Culture, Spain
• Pages: 26-26

Prado National

Museum in Madrid

APRIL 2010

Peoples in every country of the world have rich

cultural heritages that deserve to be discovered,

enjoyed and learned from; in short, to be dissem-

inated for public benefit. But at the same time,

that culture needs to be conserved for future

generations. The WIPO conference on Intellectual

Property and Cultural Heritage in the Digital

World, organized jointly with the Ministry of

Culture of Spain, focused on striking a balance

between intellectual property (IP) rights and the

public’s right to have access to culture.

Participants in the conference included represen-

tatives of various cultural institutions – archives,

libraries, museums and the like. Once seen as sa-

cred coffers guarding the treasures of the world’s

cultural heritage and granting access only to a se-

lect few, cultural institutions have now become

the movers and shakers of culture and have shift-

ed to an open-door policy. At the conference,

these institutions offered their unique perspec-

tive as custodians, or repositories, of cultural her-

itage with the obligation and responsibility to

preserve and protect the legacy entrusted to

them and make it available to the public.

A paradigm shift

Representatives of various cultural bodies high-

lighted the challenges and opportunities pre-

sented by the new policy for disseminating cul-

ture in the digital world. Without a doubt, one of

the most crucial challenges is to find a way to bal-

ance the dissemination of collections with the

need to protect IP rights.

Representatives of Spain’s largest cultural institu-

tions, such as the Prado National Museum and

the National Library, agreed with their European

and North and Latin American counterparts that

IP rights are increasingly important assets, both

from a cultural as well as an economic viewpoint.

Generating revenue from the added-value of IP

rights has traditionally been seen in continental

Europe as incompatible with the principal func-

tions of public cultural institutions; today, howev-

er, it is seen in a more positive light. IP offers cul-

tural institutions a means to generate significant

revenue, allowing them to move towards becom-

ing self-financing.

Managing IP rights

Cultural institutions are generous in making avail-

able the collections in their care. But in order to

continue their efforts in the conservation, re-

search and dissemination of cultural heritage,

they are calling for a relaxing of current IP restric-

tions. The main difficulty they face is in managing

the IP rights that apply to their collections.

Specifically, the absence of a “one-stop shop” for

communicating with rights management bodies,

the lack of clarity surrounding the public domain

and difficulties in managing so-called orphan

works (i.e., works whose right holders are un-

known or unreachable), were some of the most

hotly debated issues during the conference.

The alternatives offered by the existing legal

framework in relation to orphan works, for exam-

ple, do not meet the needs of cultural institutions.

They are, therefore, requesting a broadening of

the current rules to allow them to use such works

in certain instances, such as for the benefit of the

disabled or for educational purposes.

To better address those challenges, participants

agreed it was essential to create a constructive di-

alogue among cultural institutions, representa-

tives of content industries, right holders and

providers of information technology services.

Both WIPO and the Ministry of Culture of Spain

can play a fundamental role in fostering a climate

of greater legal certainty for all stakeholders by

promoting normative harmonization at the inter-

national level.

The key points discussed at a conference in Madrid, co-organized by WIPO and the Spanish government,

are highlighted here for the WIPO Magazine by Jaime de Mendoza Fernández, Head, Copyright Unit,

Ministry of Culture, Spain.

26

CULTURAL HERITAGE

IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

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