[pd-discuss] New partnership to map the public domain in France

[Jonathan Gray]

This is a very exciting development! Congrats to OKF France and all
involved in making this happen. :-)

http://blog.okfn.org/2013/11/08/new-partnership-to-map-the-public-domain-in-france/

J.

NEW PARTNERSHIP TO MAP THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN FRANCE

Last night Aurélie
Filippetti<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aur%C3%A9lie_Filippetti>,
the French Minister for Culture and Communication, announced a new
partnership between the French ministry of Culture and
Communication<http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/> and
the Open Knowledge Foundation France <http://fr.okfn.org/> to take steps
towards mapping the public domain in
France<http://cblog.culture.fr/projet/2013/11/08/un-calculateur-du-domaine-public-francais>
.

The ‘public domain calculator’
<http://publicdomain.okfn.org/calculators/> demonstrator
project will develop a tool to help establish legal status of cultural
works – in particular helping users to determine whether or not they have
passed out of copyright and into the public domain. You can watch a video
about the partnership here <http://vimeo.com/78740619> (in French, with
English translation coming soon).

In her speech<http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Espace-Presse/Discours/Discours-d-Aurelie-Filippetti-ministre-de-la-Culture-et-de-la-Communication-prononce-lors-de-la-ceremonie-de-cloture-de-la-journee-d-echanges-Transmettre-la-culture-a-l-ere-du-numerique-et-de-remise-des-prix-de-l-Automne-numerique>,
Minister Filippetti said:

We often say that a work has “fallen” into the public domain, as though it
falls into a state of disuse, abandonment or oblivion. In fact, precisely
the opposite is true. When a work enters the public domain, it experiences
a rebirth. And I want to show that my department recognises this.
Therefore, to support our thinking in this area, we have formed a
partnership with Open Knowledge Foundation France to develop a prototype of
a French public domain calculator using a set of cultural metadata (in this
case a selection of metadata about works from the Great War) provided by
the National Library of France.

French Minister for Culture and Communication Aurélie Filippetti announcing
the partnership between the ministry and Open Knowledge Foundation France.

The announcement was made at a reception at the end of an event on ‘the
transmission of culture in the digital
age’<http://cblog.culture.fr/2013/10/15/journee-dechanges-du-7-novembre-transmettre-la-culture-a-lere-du-numerique>,
which included talks about the value and potential of the digital public
domain and open data from cultural institutions.

I gave a keynote talk about the Open Knowledge Foundation’s work on mapping
the cultural commons with the public domain
calculators<http://publicdomain.okfn.org/calculators/>,
as well as other related initiatives such asOpenGLAM <http://openglam.org/>
 and The Public Domain Review <http://publicdomainreview.org/>.

Results were presented from a recent ‘mashup
workshop’<http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16xany_automne-numerique-retour-sur-le-mashup_news#from=embediframe>
to
encourage creative reuse of public domain works, run by the ministry in
partnership with Open Knowledge Foundation
France<http://blog.okfn.org/2013/11/08/new-partnership-to-map-the-public-domain-in-france/fr.okfn.org>
, Wikimedia France <http://www.wikimedia.fr/> and others.

There were also talks from the Rijksmuseum <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en> and
the British Library <http://www.bl.uk/> about what they are doing to
publish and encourage the reuse of open data and open digital copies of
public domain works.

Overall the day made clear that the Digital Policy Department at the French
ministry of Culture and Communication, under the leadership of Camille
Domange, have taken the decision to put the digital commons high up on
their agenda.

It is very encouraging to see such strong government recognition of the
value of the public domain as an indispensable public good. We applaud
France’s leadership in this area, and hope this will inspire other
countries to do more to enable the digital public domain to flourish and to
take steps to support its reuse for the benefit of citizens – whether for
education, creativity, or enjoyment.

*If you’re interested in helping to establish a vibrant and open digital
public domain in your country, please come and introduce yourself on our
Public Domain Working Group
<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/pd-discuss>.*

-- 

Jonathan Gray

Director of Policy and Ideas  | *@jwyg <https://twitter.com/jwyg>*

The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>

*Empowering through Open Knowledgeokfn.org <http://okfn.org/>  |  @okfn
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