Monthly Archives: April 2017

How do archives, museums and libraries enable digital access to works in their collections when it is difficult to identify or locate the copyright owners? The problem of orphan works has been addressed in part by the EU Orphan Works Directive 2012 and the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme (OWLS). But are these solutions fit for purpose? The Digitising the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks project was the first UK study addressing the legal and practical realities of diligent search since the Directive and OWLS came into effect. Now the project has concluded, with a new resource launched at www.digitisingmorgan.org.

The annual conference of the European Copyright Society (ECS), held this year at Sciences Po, Paris on 12 May 2017, will explore a possible path to a unitary EU copyright that would overcome the territorial fragmentation of online content markets. CREATe has worked with the European Copyright Society (ECS) on numerous policy submissions since the society was established in 2012. Speakers at ECS 2017 affiliated with CREATe include Prof. Martin Kretschmer (University of Glasgow), Prof. Estelle Derclaye (University of Nottingham) and Prof. Lionel Bently (University of Cambridge), as well as members of CREATe’s programme advisory council (Bernt Hugenholtz, IViR, University of Amsterdam and Reto Hilty, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich).

CREATe Deputy Director Philip Schlesinger gave the opening keynote lecture on ‘Why does cultural expertise matter?’ at the international conference on ‘La prescription culturelle en question/Investigating cultural expertise’, held at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Dijon from 5-7 April 2017. His talk focused on the current crisis of expertise in the public sphere, how institutions prescribe cultural agendas, and the diverse regimes of research that shape academic identities and agendas. The conference covered a wide range of cultural practices, from music to manga, and the tensions between algorithmic and actor-driven forms of prescription. Organised by the Groupe d’Études sur la Prescription, conference proceedings will be published in due course.