Solving Europeana’s mass-digitization issues through Extended Collective Licensing?

The ever increasing use of the Internet and of digitization technologies have opened up new possibilities for distributing and accessing creative content online, including for cultural heritage institutions. However, the digitization and dissemination of a substantial proportion of the collections held by European cultural institutions maybe considerably hindered due to high transaction costs related to clearance of copyright and related rights. This holds equally true for the cultural institutions taking part in the Europeana project. A recent study - Cross-border extended collective licensing: a solution to online dissemination of Europe's cultural heritage - examines whether the Nordic 'extended collective licensing' (ECL) model could provide a viable solution to the problems of digitization and dissemination of copyright protected works held by cultural heritage institutions, with a brief incursion into the issue of the cross-border dissemination of works. This article summarises the main findings of the study.