Smithsonian places 2.8 million works in the public domain
Smithsonian, in cooperation with Creative Commons, made almost 3 million of its works available under the CC0 “licence”. This means that rightholders waive their rights and that the content is available to copy, distribute and modify without restrictions, for any purpose (even commercial).
Smithsonian is an institution bringing together 19 museums, 9 research centres, libraries, archives and different affiliates and thus represents the biggest museum, educational and research complex in the world. Digitalisation within the Smithsonian Open Access project lasted for a decade and the result is a base with 2.8 million 2D and 3D works, from portraits of important American historical figures to dinosaur skeletons. Smithsonian joined many cultural institutions that acknowledge the importance of open access and the availability of artistic and cultural works for everyone. With a richer public domain education, research and dissemination of knowledge will be richer as well.
The French government has a new plan for Europe that could help the EU compete with the US tech giants: the digital commons.
The International Association of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), PAC Centre for digital preservation, hosted at the National Library of Poland is holding a series of 10 webinars on basic understanding of digitisation projects.
Communia, a non-governmental organisation that advocates for policies that expand the public domain and increase access to and reuse of culture and knowledge, issued twenty new copyright policy recommendations for the next decade.
The DSM Directive entered into force in June 2019 and the deadline for implementation expired on 7 June 2021. On 23 June 2021, the Commission launched multiple infringement procedures and sent letters of formal notice to Slovenia and 22 other Member States that had failed to notify it of the full transposition of the Directive. Slovenia remains among the 14 Member States against which the Commission is continuing the infringement procedure. On 19 May 2022, the Commission sent reasoned opinions to Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, France, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden.