With Enough Eyeballs All Searches are Diligent: Mobilizing the Crowd in Copyright Clearance for Mass Digitization

Borghi, Maurizio; Erickson, Kenneth L.; Favale, Marcella

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2806145

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The labor costs that such diligent search would require are prohibitable expensive for any cultural institution with a sizable collection. The crowd is instructed on how to search for a works potential right holder before labeling it as orphan (Borghi, Erickson & Favale, 2016). 24…”

Section: Aggregated Input Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowdsourcing the digital transformation of heritage

Navarrete¹

2020

Digital Transformation in the Cultural and Creative Industries

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Crowdsourcing, or outsourcing to the crowd, serves to redistribute the cost of developing new products and services beyond the firm to a crowd who provides finances, information, labor, or ideas for a marginal cost. Digital networked technologies have increased the pool of providers and speed of provision with important economic implications. Adoption in the heritage field has not been widespread. This chapter proposes a taxonomy of crowdsourcing projects and presents a selection of representative projects in the heritage sector focusing on advancing digital heritage activities. The analysis identifies four main benefits to involve the crowd: (1) work can advance surpassing limitations of institutional budgets constraints; (2) participation and further crowd engagement stimulate the notion of socially constructed commons; (3) tapping into a global crowd enables the redistribution of costs and benefits beyond geo-political boundaries, strengthening notions of a common heritage resource; and (4) by engaging in digital collaboration with the crowd, greater insight can be gained into the cultural consumption dynamics evolving on the Internet. Challenges identified include the sustainability of the crowd's work, involving the reuse of results beyond the crowdsourcing project, as well as incorporating the crowd's contribution into the organizational production process, adopting it for instance as part of the collections' information system.

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Section: Aggregated Input Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowdsourcing the digital transformation of heritage

Navarrete¹

2020

Digital Transformation in the Cultural and Creative Industries

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“…Nevertheless, in most cases, complying with the requirement for a diligent search involves high costs, or at least costs that might exceed the resources of cultural institutions, particularly in times of severe budgetary limitations. This poses the question of whether orphan works legislation accomplishes the objective set by the policy makers of enabling wider utilisation and reutilisation of “recent cultural heritage items, in view of developing a truly comprehensive and inclusive universal library” (Borghi, Erickson, & Favale, , p. 139).…”

Section: Nature Of Orphan Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proliferation of the problem of orphan works across the world

Ahmed

Al-Salihi

2019

World Intellectual Property

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The article examines the problem of orphan works in general. Orphan works are copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or impossible to identify and/or locate after a diligent search has been conducted. The article introduces the nature of the problem and how it emerged.There are various reasons for the creation of the problem of orphan works and the authors undertake a qualitative approach to a thorough investigation that reveals that orphan works have become a significant challenge. The authors also reveal the legal and technological factors behind the creation of the problem and suggest ways to prevent its recurrence in the future. It is understood that orphan works undermine the goal of copyright law because one of the objectives of providing authors with copyright protection is that the public should, in return, be able to access the protected work and take benefit from it; however, the problem of orphan works deprives the public of a means of accessing these works.

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“…These materials have been referred to as “orphan works”: that is, they are likely in-copyright but relevant rightsholders are unknown or cannot be located for the purpose of securing permission for use (Urban, 2012; Borghi and Karapapa, 2013). Investment in mass digitisation is therefore hindered by high transaction costs associated with searching for and locating rightsholders, and by the inability to locate some rightsholders which may prevent digitisation of those works entirely (Borghi et al , 2017). Understanding the precise source and nature of these costs is key to developing policy solutions to the so-called “orphan works problem” which plagues mass digitisation efforts across the library, archive and museum sector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I should like you to see them some time”

Stobo

Patterson

Erickson

et al. 2018

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Purpose The inability of cultural institutions to make available digital reproductions of collected material highlights a shortcoming with the existing copyright framework in a number of national jurisdictions. Overlapping efforts to remedy the situation were recently undertaken in the form of EU Directive 2012/28/EU, the “Orphan Works” directive, and a new licensing scheme introduced by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate both the EU and UK policy approaches, drawing on data collected during a live rights clearance simulation. Design/methodology/approach The authors attempted to clear rights in a sample of 432 items contained in the mixed-media Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks collection held by the University of Glasgow Library. Data were collected on the resource costs incurred at each stage of the rights clearance process, from initial audit of the collection, through to compliance with diligent search requirements under EU Directive 2012/28/EU and the UKIPO licensing procedures. Findings Comparing results against the two current policy options for the use of orphan works, the authors find that the UKIPO licensing scheme offers a moderate degree of legal certainty but also the highest cost to institutions (the cost of diligent search in addition to licence fees). The EU exception to copyright provides less legal certainty in the case of rightsholder re-emergence, but also retains high diligent search costs. Both policy options may be suitable for institutions wishing to make use of a small number of high-risk works, but neither approach is currently suitable for mass digitisation. Research limitations/implications This rights clearance exercise is focussed on a single case study with unique properties (with a high proportion of partial works embedded in a work of bricolage). Consequently, the results obtained in this study reflect differences from simulation studies on other types of orphan works. However, by adopting similar methodological and reporting standards to previous empirical studies, the authors can compare rights clearance costs between collections of different works. Originality/value This study is the first to empirically assess the 2014 UK orphan works licensing scheme from an institutional perspective. The authors hope that it will contribute to an understanding of how policy could more effectively assist libraries and archives in their digitisation efforts.

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With Enough Eyeballs All Searches are Diligent: Mobilizing the Crowd in Copyright Clearance for Mass Digitization

Abstract: Digitization

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Crowdsourcing the digital transformation of heritage

Crowdsourcing the digital transformation of heritage

Proliferation of the problem of orphan works across the world

“I should like you to see them some time”

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