National Digital Forum 2014

Traditional Knowledge and Copyright: the Implications for Digitising Pacific Island Cultural Heritage Collections

presented by Mark Boddington

So what would this mean for those with an interest in digitization? Despite being a new legal framework, the proposal may lead to some familiar problems for cultural heritage institutions. Many of you are aware of the problem of orphan works in copyright. This is where the owner of a protected work is unidentifiable or uncontactable, and because they can’t be found it follows that they can’t grant permission to others to copy their work.