Orphan works

Key points:

The Committee:

• welcomes the Proposal from the Commission that will boost the development of digital libraries and other public institutions through which citizens can access the diversity and richness of Europe's cultural heritage;
• strongly supports the digitisation and wide dissemination of Europe’s cultural heritage;
• believes that making this material available online is a key component of the development on the knowledge economy in Europe;
• calls for the availability of online databases and registries of rights to facilitate the efficient search for copyright;
• is of the opinion that Member States should maintain a register of databases with the results of diligent searches for copyright holders;
• draws the attention to the importance of traditional music, oral history, photographs and cinematographic works to the cultural heritage of the EU and requests that such recordings and images will receive equal treatment in the identification and publication of orphan works.

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