News :: High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries

Europe's Digital Library experts set to focus on copyright today

The EU's High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries - which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google - will present this afternoon an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission. In addition, the group will discuss today how to ensure more open access to scientific research and how to improve public-private cooperation. The work of the High Level Group is part of the European Commission's efforts to make Europe's rich cultural and scientific heritage available online. For this purpose, the group advises the Commission on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material.

"Protection of intellectual property is important to stimulate creativity and innovation in the knowledge-based economy." - Viviane Reding

(18/04/2007) "Protection of intellectual property is important to stimulate creativity and innovation in the knowledge-based economy. Solving copyright issues in an online-environment is therefore crucial if we are to make the vision of a European Digital Library a reality", said Viviane Reding, the EU's Commissioner for Information Society and Media who founded the High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries a year ago. "I will therefore look with great interest into the recommendations made by the High Level Group to see in which way the European Commission, the Member States and the relevant stakeholders could best follow them up. After the discussions so far, for me an approach based on wide-spread agreements between libraries and rightholders looks promising if they manage to make the user interests a priority."

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Related Information:

Commission Press Room: IP/07/508