Risk Area: Legal
Copyright and privacy considerations
GLAM institutions face significant legal challenges, particularly in determining copyright ownership and ensuring compliance with copyright laws. Concerns are frequently raised about the potential misuse of open access materials and the risk of infringements due to incorrect licensing. Additionally, many institutions note the complexities of managing copyrighted materials they do not own, emphasising the need for cautious handling to avoid legal complications.
”We aren't always the copyright holders on all works and/or their reproductions. In other cases, we manage the digital reproductions but are not the owner of the underlying works.”
Non-profit organisation, Belgium
Compliance with copyright laws, particularly regarding works with ambiguous ownership or uncertain copyright status, such as orphan works and out-of-commerce works.
Compliance with cultural heritage laws that extend control over cultural heritage materials through copyright-like restrictions beyond the scope or term of copyright law.
Compliance with contractual restrictions or licence terms that override or conflict with statutory exceptions and limitations to copyright, or with protections of the public domain.
Protection of sensitive personal information found within collection records, such as donor details and subject data.
Adherence to third-party terms of service for platforms or tools used to host or share collections.
Conduct a copyright and rights audit: Review the collection to determine copyright status, ownership, and rights holders for each item. This ensures that items shared online are legally compliant.
Implement clear licensing: Apply standardised copyright licenses, public domain tools, and rights statements carefully, ensuring accurate attribution and clear usage guidelines to minimise the risk of misuse.
Provide copyright training for staff: Ensure that team members involved in digitising and licensing/labelling are well-trained in copyright and licensing principles to avoid potential infringements.
Develop infringement response protocols: Establish protocols to handle copyright claims or misuse reports promptly and transparently – e.g., by developing open access and takedown policies.
Safeguard privacy: Identify and protect personal and sensitive data within the collection records, ensuring that any personal information (such as names or contact information of donors or subjects) is either anonymised or redacted before public sharing.
Review third-party terms of service: Regularly review and ensure compliance with the terms of service of any third-party platforms or digital tools used for hosting, sharing, or distributing collections.
Licensing/rights statements: Copyright licenses and public domain tools like those from Creative Commons or the Rights Statements Consortium can help generate clear and machine-readable CC licenses or Rights Statements based on each item’s copyright and reuse status.
Creative Commons Guide - Recommended Licenses and Tools for Cultural Heritage Content
Europeana’s Guide - How to select an accurate rights statement
Rights Statements - 3 categories, 12 different Rights Statements
GLAM-E Lab’s Handbook: Selecting an Alternative Label or Licence
Legal and privacy compliance templates: Use standardised checklists and templates for copyright clearance, permissions, licensing agreements, and privacy notices to ensure consistency across the collections.
Naomi Korn Associates’s Copyright Rights Clearance Checklists
Naomi Korn Associates's Creative Commons Licences: A Guide to Data Protection & Copyright (including checklists and templates)
GLAM-E Lab (2024) Copyright Clearance Log
Takedown Policy template of the Risk Management Toolkit for Open GLAM.
Copyright training for GLAM professionals:
Creative Commons Certificate Programme - Open Culture/GLAM section (Certificate resources). Creative Commons also provides customised training and consulting offerings.
How to identify and clear copyright in collection items - This page by Europeana shares training to help GLAM professionals determine if, and which rights exist in their institution’s collection items. It is the first of three blocks of training, followed by Training on the available rights statements used by Europeana and Training on how to select an accurate rights statement.
Self-paced courses on the Europeana Academy training platform:
Copyright when sharing data with Europeana - This course shares training to help you determine if, and which, rights exist in your collection items. This is an essential first step before one can assign an accurate rights statement. It is the first of three blocks of training, and is followed by the course on the available rights statements used by Europeana and the course on how to select an accurate rights statement.
Understanding the standardised rights information used by Europeana - Rights statements express the copyright status of a digital object and provide information about how someone can re-use the object. This course outlines and offers training on the rights statements you can apply to the data you share with Europeana.
How to select an accurate rights statement - This self-paced course offers information on how to identify the most accurate and adequate rights statement for the data you share with Europeana.
Courses on the WikiLearn platform:
Introduktion till upphovsrätt (Swedish) - The course (developed by Wikimedia Sverige) provides a brief introduction to copyright, Creative Commons licenses, and what you need to consider when contributing to Wikimedia’s projects.
Propriété intellectuelle et Créative Commons (French) - This course, which is designed for Wikimedians and their partners (for example, staff of cultural institutions), provides an introduction to key concepts of copyright and how to use Creative Commons licenses.
Wikimedia Core Curriculum module 5: Copyright and free licenses (English) - This course describes traditional copyright, discusses its shortcomings, and introduces alternative licenses (in particular the Creative Commons licenses).
Other resources:
Law Flow – Simplified Legal Complexity is a website that offers a clear and accessible way to navigate legal complexity through flowcharts. It covers a wide range of legal topics, with a particular focus on intellectual property law in the European Union.
CopyrightUser.EU is an independent online platform intended to make EU copyright law accessible to everyone.
CopyrightUser.org is an online resource aimed at making UK copyright law accessible to creators, media professionals, entrepreneurs, students, and members of the public.
The copyrightexceptions.eu is a collaborative effort to map user rights in the European Union’s copyright framework.
Stay updated with good practices: Follow organisations and initiatives like Creative Commons, Europeana, OpenGLAM, and GLAM Wiki to stay updated with open access guidelines.
Create user guidelines for open content: Provide clear guidelines on how users may interact with open access collections, respecting legal and ethical boundaries.
Public Domain Guidelines - Use guidelines, information-only draft on CC Wiki
Nudging Users to Reference Institutions with Public Domain Materials: A Creative Commons Guide (English) – Available in other languages here.
Build a community of practice: Join forums and networks with other GLAM institutions to share experiences, insights, and risk management strategies.
Become a member of the Creative Commons Open Culture Platform, where you can be added to the mailing list, and can join regular meetings and work together on collaborative projects to further Open Culture.
Join the Europeana Copyright community (i.e. group of professionals interested in copyright and digital cultural heritage), so as to stay informed about copyright trends, legal and policy changes, rights information and approaches to clearing rights.
Join the Cultural Heritage Open Scholarship Network (CHOSN) to share knowledge on how to establish good practices in open scholarship.
How this risk area connects to other risk areas
Legal clarity underpins all other risk mitigation efforts. Unclear copyright status, restrictive contracts, or weak privacy safeguards can amplify financial risks (unexpected liabilities), ethical risks (harm to communities), technical risks (forced takedowns or platform dependency), and geopolitical risks (external leverage through legal pressure). Strong rights audits, transparent licensing, and privacy protocols reduce institutional exposure across all risk areas and increase resilience in times of crisis.
Use cases
Cultural heritage professionals don’t make certain digital collections open access because of copyright ambiguity. If materials are made available without proper copyright checks, there’s a risk of copyright infringement or misuse by the public, which can impact legal compliance and damage the reputation of the institution.
Decision makers don’t make certain digital collections open access, because inaccurate licensing or uncertainties in copyright ownership could lead to privacy breaches or unauthorised sharing or misuse. This would impact the institution’s ability to safeguard sensitive cultural materials and comply with contractual obligations, especially in cases involving Indigenous communities.
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