Brussels, 13 September 2012, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) welcomes today’s first reading adoption of the Directive on Orphan Works by the European Parliament: it is the first step towards much-needed copyright modernization. 

The legislative proposal defines a common approach to determining the orphan status of a work and enables users to make it available throughout Europe for purposes related to their public interest missions.

Recalling that providing a suitable legal framework to facilitate the digitization and dissemination of works is key for Europe’s creative economy, the Directive nevertheless only resolves a few very specific situations.

As the leading association of national media organizations in the world, the EBU regrets that the Directive stops short of providing a genuine solution for licensing valuable television and radio archive material. Rights clearance systems should unlock this valuable cultural heritage and enable Europeans to access this important part of their history on the internet. 

A number of practical measures are still needed to boost Europe’s creative economy, such as technology-neutral licensing systems for the transmission of programmes in the digital environment, legal certainty for broadcasters’ online services across borders, and the cross-border recognition of national rights-management solutions.

“Public service media have all engaged in ambitious digitization plans and have invaluable radio and audiovisual archive material to bring to the public. Until now, regrettably, these archives cannot be fully released as rights clearance procedures do not take account of broadcasters' internet-based services. The Directive on Orphan Works is the first step forward in a series of initiatives to find rights management solutions that ease the online circulation of cultural content all over Europe, and fully respect rightholders’ interests,” said Ingrid Deltenre, Director General of the EBU.

The EBU is still waiting for a solution to online rights’ licensing that takes the specific activities of broadcasters into account. The EBU believes that the recently published Proposal for a Directive on Collective Rights Management and the follow-up to the Green Paper on the Online Distribution of Audiovisual Works show European institutions’ determination to find further solutions to adapting copyright to the digital economy.

Note to editors:

About orphan works:
Orphan works are those creative works – photographs, books, music or films for instance – whose rightsholders cannot be identified or found.

About the legislative procedure:
As the text voted in the European Parliament is identical to the compromise version from the Council, the European Commission and the Parliament in June 2012, the Council is now expected to adopt the act as voted in the European Parliament. Member States will then have two years to apply it.

About the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
The EBU is the world's foremost alliance of public service media organizations, with Members in 56 countries in Europe and beyond.
The EBU's mission is to defend the interests of public service media and to promote their indispensible contribution to modern society. It is the point of reference for industry knowledge and expertise.
The EBU operates Eurovision, the media industry's premier distributor and producer of top quality live sport and news, as well as entertainment, culture and music content.
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