Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Key Principles on the Digitisation and Making Available of Out-of-Commerce Works – Frequently Asked Questions

From an important group of international library associations and publisher associations: "The MoU is a sector-specific stakeholder-driven agreement negotiated amongst organisations representing libraries on the one hand and publishers, authors and their collecting societies on the other. It contains the Key Principles that these parties will follow to license the digitisation and making available (including across borders in the EU) of books or learned journals that are out-of-commerce. It aims to encourage voluntary collective licences....Through voluntary agreements interested parties can negotiate mutually acceptable terms and conditions for the online exploitation of out-of-commerce works. This is preferable to legislation that could be too prescriptive and lack...flexibility....In the case of out-of-commerce works, the needs are different. These are the needs of "mass digitisation", for instance of important parts of a library's collection. We are trying to provide a licensing solution for works which, while normally being under copyright, are no longer in commerce. The challenge that must be addressed is how to facilitate these licenses, taking into account that often they will need to cover a large number of works and different right holders. This is what the MoU sets out to do....The MoU was signed by the European Writers’ Council (EWC), the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), the European Publishers' Council (EPC), the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA), the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER), European Visual Artists (EVA), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Federation of Reprographic Rights Organisations (IFRRO)...."