The New Renaissance

In April last year the European Commission commissioned a reflection group (‘comité des sages’) to make recommendations for bringing Europe’s cultural heritage online. The Comité has now delivered their report, ‘The New Renaissance’.

As well as looking forward to EU orphan works legislation, the Comité would like to avoid future orphan works by introducing registration for copyright. ‘Refreshing’ the Berne Convention is in order. ‘Creative production is exploding online (e.g. user-generated content) without a clear indication of how to contact the creator…’

They would like to see all out-of-distribution works digitized even if they are not orphans. If right owners don’t want to exploit, digitization should be paid for with public money. ‘It may be necessary to collectively manage the rights to older out of distribution works’ with remuneration for rights holders and the possibility to opt out. They believe that the primary responsibility must rest with the public sector, though in partnership with the private sector with up to 7 years preferential use by private partners.

According to the report:

‘The ease with which today’s users can access big search engines and platforms and find an overwhelming offer of information, books, newspapers, websites, archival material, pictures, music or movies naturally leads to expectations towards cultural institutions. Accustomed to the comfort of search engines and new services, they expect to find everything on the web. “What is not on the web, does not exist” is the core of their belief and behaviour. What is on the shelves, in the archives, in the exhibition halls of cultural institutions will soon fall into oblivion, if it is not digitised and offered alongside the born digital works and all the other internet services.’

It seems that in the New Renaissance people will never travel to exotic places to see real works of art (to be astonished by their size or mesmerized by their brushstrokes). They will work as scanning-machine engineers, obesity doctors or information-overload therapists. And one day someone at the central cultural website Europeana will finish reading the last Mills & Boon novel, inspecting the last photograph of a coin and watching the last episode of Coronation Street and in a moment of joyous liberation he will reach for the big Delete button … and the Renaissance will slide peacefully back into the Dark Ages.