Critical considerations concerning the cultural heritage sector and creative industries regarding works in copyright on the open web
This resource has been shared by ekip in response to the targeted initiative for a better copyright environment for European creativity and innovation. It proposes propose four approaches forward that would strengthen the positions of copyright holders in the culture and creative industries and cultural heritage and GLAM sectors.
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Author
- University of Edinburgh, ekip (2026)
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This resource has been shared by ekip in response to the targeted initiative for a better copyright environment for European creativity and innovation (see here).
Summary
The EU’s cultural heritage and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) institutions strongly promote protecting copyright, but copyright restrictions are at odds with the AI sector’s approach of indiscriminately scraping the open web. The cultural heritage sector is, therefore, increasingly concerned about 1) AI scraping of copyrighted content in their collections, 2) the financial costs resulting from AI scraping on some institutions’ core IT infrastructure, and 3) new enclosures of digital collections as rights holders in the sector withhold, remove or block content from the open web due to copyright concerns.
Our response also notes that the culture and creative industries (CCIs) currently face asymmetric relations with the AI industry regarding the development and deployment of AI systems. Current laws do not support CCIs to uphold access restrictions on their copyrighted works by AI systems, and content creators lack channels to understand when their work is used by AI companies or receive potential recompense for their contribution.
We propose four approaches forward that would strengthen the positions of copyright holders in the culture and creative industries and cultural heritage and GLAM sectors:
- Clarify areas of ambiguity in current copyright law to reduce burdens on rights holders to reserve in-copyright works from commercial AI scraping.
- Create and promote authenticity standards that support companies to adhere to open licenses.
- Develop easy-to-use (including by creative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual SMEs) opt-in registries for content creators and stewards of creative content that are shared with AI companies.
- Facilitate transparency by AI companies by creating channels by which rights holders can query commercial use of material.
The onus should be on AI developers to ensure copyrights are upheld and seek permissions
