Rony Vissers walks us through the basic concepts and notions related to copyright for Public Domain Day Belgium 2019.

2. Copyright for dummies
&
public domain
Rony Vissers (PACKED /VIAA)
Brussels, 20th January 2019

3. PROJECTS

4. PROJECTS

5. OPEN CONTENT / DATA
http://opencontent.org/definition/

6. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

7. OPEN CONTENT / DATA
http://opencontent.org/definition/

8. OPEN CONTENT / DATA
"Heritage collections and collection data that do not (no longer) have
copyright protection belong to the so-called public domain. It is the most
obvious group of heritage collections and collection data that we can
focus on in realizing an Open Data Policy. An important principle must
be and remain that, in principle, cultural content and data that already
belong to the public domain remain public after digitization.”
Source: Recommendations on open data in the cultural sector (2018, Nederlandse
Taalunie)

9. PUBLIC DOMAIN
The public domain is a term used to indicate that works no longer fall
under the protection of copyright and related rights. In that situation
there is no rightsholder and you therefore do not need permission to
use the works.

10. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

11. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
▪ Intellectual property rights
▪ copyright > authors, “those who create works of literature or art”
▪ neighboring rights of copyright > performing artists, producers of
phonograms and films, broadcasting organizations
▪ legal protection of databases > producers of databases
▪ (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) > data privacy
regulation)

12. COPYRIGHT
▪ Copyright
▪ a concrete form
▪ the originality requirement
▪ no registration obligation
▪ official acts of government are excluded

13. COPYRIGHT
Portrait d'un jeune homme van
Corneille de Lyon (1500/1510-
1575), KMSKA
L’Âge d’airain van Auguste Rodin (1840 -
1917), Alte Nationalgalerie
Daniel Ullrich, Threedots [Public domain,
GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.0 de,
from Wikimedia Commons

14. COPYRIGHT
▪ Moral rights (inalienable; parties can agree not to enforce them
in certain circumstances)
▪ the right of publication: the author decides when the work is ready to be
announced.
▪ the paternity right: the author has the right to be named (or refused).
▪ the right to respect: the author can oppose any change to the work, in
particular against any distortion, mutilation or deterioration.

15. COPYRIGHT
▪ Property rights (can be transferred)
▪ the reproduction right: the right to make copies (copies) of a work; this also
includes the right to edit or translate the work.
▪ the rental and lending right: the right to rent out and lend the work.
▪ the distribution right: the right to sell copies of the work.
▪ the right to communicate to the public: the right to give the public access to
a work via live performances / performances, cable and satellite
transmissions and transmissions via electronic networks / internet.

16. COPYRIGHT
▪ Who has the copyright?
▪ The creator of the work: the physical person who made the work and after
his death his heirs.
▪ Collaboration between different authors: joint exercise of copyright by the
co-authors.
▪ Works made to execute an order: the client if the author transfers his
copyrights to the client in writing
▪ Works made in the context of an employment: the works made by
employees or civil servants within the framework of their ordinary duties do
in principle not automatically accrue to the employer > an explicitly written
transfer is required in order for the employer to obtain the copyright
property rights

17. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Cultural content in the public domain
▪ Copyright determines that a work up to a fixed number of years after the death of
the author (s) may not be changed by others or be published again without explicit
permission from the author (s) or his heirs.
▪ Most creative works fall automatically under copyright, even if the author does not
explicitly claim this.
▪ Belgium: copyright applies until 70 years after the death of the author. At the end of
this period, the works protected by copyright fall into the public domain and can be
exploited without permission from the copyright holders.

18. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ How does cultural content enter the public domain?
▪ The copyright on a work may have expired, because the legal term of protection by
copyright in the country in question has expired. The work will then reach the public
domain on 1 January of the following year.
▪ Copyright is simply not applicable, eg. in mathematical formulas and methods from
physics, legislative texts, and original works that were created before the copyright
existed.
▪ A work can be explicitly placed by the maker in the public domain, or the status can
be assigned to the work. The author then waives the protection that otherwise
automatically applies. It is important for authors to provide a correct statement of
rights in the event of a waiver of rights to an original work. Only then are the works
really free of rights and the (re) user has legal certainty.

19. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

20. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

21. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

22. OPEN CONTENT / DATA

23. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Cultural content in the public domain
▪ Works that appear to be in the public domain, however, can not always be used
freely.
▪ After all, it is possible that there are other intellectual property rights than copyright,
eg. neighboring rights of the performing artists and producers.
▪ Works based on works in the public domain can also be protected. A translation for
example is considered a work in itself, with its own copyrights.
▪ In such cases, permission will still have to be requested from the rightholders (or
their representatives).

24. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Orphan works
▪ Unfortunately, a lot of content is in a twilight zone between public domain and
copyright protected works (orphan works, out-of-commerce work).
▪ An orphan work or orphan work can be defined as a work protected by copyright (or
by a related right protection), the copyright owner of which can not be identified and
/ or located by someone who wishes to use this work and for this purpose seek the
required permission.
▪ In such a situation, the user can decide not to use the work either, or to still use the
work (eg. digitizing and online communication via internet) and take the risk to be
subsequently convicted to pay a fee. compensation to the rightful claimant who
would turn up anyway.

25. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Orphan works
▪ To provide legal certainty, the law stipulates that libraries, educational institutions,
museums, archives, heritage institutions and public broadcasters may use orphan
works that are part of their collections for the purpose of digitizing, making available,
indexing, cataloging, preserving or restoring them.
▪ The law does require that the institutions have carefully examined the identification
of the rightsholders and that they have recorded the documentation regarding this
research in an online database.
▪ It concerns works in the form of a book, newspaper, magazine or other writing as
well as cinematographic or other audiovisual works and phonograms that are part of
the collections of the above-mentioned institutions.

26. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Orphan works

27. COPYRIGHT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
▪ Out-of-commerce works
▪ Out-of-commerce works are works that are still protected by copyright but are no
longer available on the market.
▪ Digitizing and making these works available, is not possible without the consent of
the copyright owners.

28. THANK YOU!
rony@packed.be