That’s the title of an article in The Register. According to the article a project designed to identify the copyright status of European works is going to be extended to cover multimedia material. In 2008 the ARROW project was formed:
to co-ordinate the activities of libraries and rights management bodies in publishing the details of who owns the copyright in written works.
Head of the ARROW project management team Piero Attanasio has told a press conference that the scheme, which was due to end in May, has been extended. It will become ARROW Plus and will work with bodies in 17 EU countries to examine how its system can apply to copyrights in visual material.
Kroes, who is the vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has said that this expanded system could be placed at the heart of the commission’s reforms of laws surrounding orphan works, which are cultural products whose copyright owner cannot be identified.
“I have a vision: one search in ARROW should be all you should need to determine the copyright status of a cultural good in Europe,” said Kroes in a speech to rights management bodies. “If it were embedded in the forthcoming Directive on orphan works, ARROW could become the official portal in Europe where you can find essential rights information and do automated searches of rightholders and copyrights.
More info in the article.
