• Digitisation of Public Domain knowledge does not create new rights over it45 [59] An efficient tool to help prevent improper or undesired use of museum collections is to employ user-friendly open licences that clearly state what users can and cannot do with the images. Creative Commons is the most widespread open license system. Creative Commons offers an alternative to the inflexibility of traditional copyright. Simply put, it is a matter of “some rights reserved” instead of “all rights reserved”. Creative Commons is a global system comprising four elements that can be combined in various constellations to form six basic licences to match each right owner’s wishes and needs. For example, an artist may allow others to share and use reproductions of her work privately as long as she is credited, but still claim exclusive rights to use the work commercially (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial or CC BY-NC). Or she can allow others to process her picture and make money from derived works while also requiring that derived works are licensed on equal terms (Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike or CC BY-SA). In addition to the six basic licences the Creative Commons system offers two other options, CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) that dedicates copyrighted material to the public domain, and the Public Domain Mark that clearly indicates that a work of art is already in the public domain.46 [60]
[60] Read more about the Creative Commons license system in Martin von Haller Grønbæk’s article p. 141 ff.
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There is a clear dividing line between artworks in the public domain and copyrighted works of art. But considering the international GLAM sector, there are millions of artworks and objects that have long since become exempt from copyright and are in the public domain. When digitised, such collections can heighten the overall quality of the Internet’s freely available cultural heritage resources – provided that they are opened up to free sharing and re-use.
MERETE SANDERHOFF