I’m part of a team, led by Rightscom, which has won a bid to do a major analysis of the scope and nature of the public domain in Europe for the European Commission. As it says in the announcement:
We will assemble quantitative and qualitative data and produce a methodology for measuring the public domain which can be used and refined for future studies both within Europe and further a field. The objectives of the report are four fold:
- To estimate the number of works in the public domain in the EU and calculate approximately the levels and ways of use and main users of published works
- To estimate the current economic value of public domain works and estimate the value of works that in the next 10-20 years are to be released into the public domain and determine any change in its value whilst under copyright and once it is on the public domain
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For my part, I’m going to be particularly focused on the size and value questions. This will involve getting large datasets about cultural material and trying to answer questions like: How many of these items are in the public domain? What’s the difference in price and availability of public domain versus non public domain items?