POST: What is “extended” about Extended Collective Licensing?

Kevin Smith (Duke University) has authored a post for the Duke University Libraries Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog on the US Copyright Office’s new proposals on orphan works and mass digitization. Smith breaks down the proposals, including how the “extended collective licensing” provision would work:

Alongside this proposal for how to deter use of individual orphan works is a grander scheme to deter mass digitization projects, called extended collective licensing.  So what does “extended” mean in this context?  A normal collective licensing scheme means that rights holders get together and create a collective organization to administer the rights that they own.  Such organizations are usually inefficient and sometimes prone to corruption, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea behind them.  They could, if done well, increase efficiency for both rights holders and users (that is, for new creators).  When a collective licensing scheme is extended, however, it means that licenses are being sold for rights not held by any of the members of the collective society.  That is the point about orphan works — a collective society representing the traditional content industries would sell licenses for the use of works for which they do not, by definition, hold the rights.  They would collect licensing fees “on behalf” of the unknown owners.

Smith goes on to expand upon why extended collective licensing and the Copyright Office proposals in general are so harmful to libraries and to the creative sphere:

ECL is a form of tax on using orphan works.  The revenue from that tax will have no benefit in providing an incentive for further creation, because it will not go to the creators who made the works in the first place.  But a requirement to pay such an unproductive tax will certainly deter many digitization projects that could make rare historic materials available for research, study and teaching.  Thus productivity is lost without the benefits of an economic incentive.  It is, truly, a lose-lose situation.

Author: Caitlin Christian-Lamb

Caitlin is a PhD candidate and instructor of record at the University of Maryland’s iSchool, where she is affiliated with the Ethics and Values in Design Lab (EViD) and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).