Digital Public Library of America » Blog Archive » The principles for establishing international & interoperable rights statements

"Over the past twelve months representatives from Europeana, DPLA and Creative Commons have been exploring the possibilities for a collaborative approach to rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via our platforms. This work is close to the heart of both Europeana and the DPLA as we both seek to share clear and accurate information about copyright status with users. While we operate under different copyright laws on either side of the Atlantic, we share many common issues.  For some Cultural Organizations there are restrictions placed by the donor on the reuse of an object, for some national or state laws create legislative restrictions and for some organizations may only have permission to allow educational uses of object in their collections.  These are just some of the copyright issues faced  by organizations that contribute data to Europeana and the DPLA. In this cooperative effort, we have set out to build a flexible system of rights statements that allows our contributing partners to clearly communicate what users can or cannot do with the objects that are published via our platforms. This system further develops the approach taken by Europeana with the Europeana Licensing Framework making it more flexible and adapting it to the needs of institutions outside of the EU. On behalf of the Working Group we are pleased to share with you today two White Papers that describe our recommendations for establishing a group of rights statements, and the enabling technical infrastructure.  These recommendations include a proposal for a list of shared rights statement that both the DPLA and Europeana can use depending on the needs of our respective organizations ..."