How do I choose a rights statement when submitting data to Europeana?

 

Please note that this page does not constitute legal advice, and should not be relied upon as such. It is meant as a guide to help data providers make decisions regarding rights statement selection.

Europeana data providers may choose between Creative Commons licenses, a subset of rights statements provided by RightsStatements.org, and Creative Commons Public Domain Tools, as listed on Europeana Pro. When selecting a rights statement we advise you to take into account the following aspects, which reflect both legal obligations and Europeana’s policy recommendations:

When establishing whether a work is protected by copyright or not, a data provider should first check if the object qualifies for copyright protection. More information about identifying whether a work is subject to copyright or not is available on Europeana Pro.

For guidelines on which URI for specific rights statements you should use when providing EDM, consult this page.

Right owner’s permission, exceptions and limitations

The rights owner (i.e. the author or a third party if the rights have been transferred) has the right to exclude others from using the work without obtaining permission. Because cultural heritage institutions often do not own the copyright, they should consult with the rights owner before using or allowing specific uses of the work. More information about identifying whether a work is subject to copyright or not is available on Europeana Pro.

No rights on digitisation: the Europeana Public Domain Charter

In most cases, digital objects created through digitisation will not meet the required originality threshold to qualify for any form of protection based on copyright.

Europeana is committed to the principle that the digitisation of Public Domain content does not create new rights over it. The Europeana Public Domain Charter establishes that works that are in the Public Domain in analog form should continue to be in the Public Domain once they have been digitised.

It is likely that, before we publish your data, we will query the submission of any objects that appear to be in the Public Domain but which are not labeled as such. We will work with you to determine the correct rights statement and subsequently publish the data. We pay particular attention to metadata elements like <dc:date>, <dcterms:created> and <dc:creator> to verify the existence of copyright.

Other restrictions on reuse

There could be other restrictions besides copyright that have an impact on the allowed use of the work.

Even when the work is not protected by copyright, the owning institution could be contractually required to restrict certain commercial uses because of digitisation agreements with donors, for example. There could also be legal restrictions imposed by laws other than copyright, for example, legal restrictions protecting traditional cultural expression.

If there are legal or contractual obligations that limit the reuse of digitised objects, institutions can select between rights statements provided by Rightsstatement.org that were created for the unique situations cultural heritage institutions face. When using some of these rights statements, data providers should supply additional information, as outlined in the additional requirements.

Europeana’s approach to accuracy

As a data provider, you have the responsibility to respect the copyright holders and to comply with the national law during the rights clearance process. We take a “clean hands” approach and assume that you have undertaken the correct level of due diligence and labeled the digital objects accurately. However, we also wish to support our data providers to make sure rights statements are applied in line with their respective national laws, Europeana policies and sector standards. In order to do this, the submission of the rights statements will prompt a manual review during the ingestion process (prior to publication), and we may at this point question the use of some rights statements. This approach enables a consistent standard to be reached when applying rights statements, which ultimately helps users to be clear on how the objects and collections can be used.

We also analyse the data post-publication to ensure and verify a consistent level of accuracy of rights statements across the database. There may be situations post-publication when it becomes clear that the chosen rights statements do not meet the acceptance criteria. We will discuss these issues with you when they occur.