Broadcaster Archives: Rights to Access
9 September, 12.00 GMT – online – free with registration
Broadcaster archives are often rich and deep, with multi-genre collections containing a mix of in-house produced and third party content, and inevitable rights complexities and associated risk considerations.
This workshop will look at the opportunities and challenges facing broadcasters worldwide in providing archive access to a range of stakeholders with different interests – be that creative and commercial re-use by programme makers, filmmakers and journalists, or non-commercial access for the individual: students, academics and the public.
The session will focus on rights and regulations and will ask if, by necessity of their regulatory and copyright landscapes, Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) and private broadcasters take differing approaches to rights and risk when they are providing archive services to the production community and beyond.
This workshop will be of interest to archivists, library managers, rights management experts and copyright lawyers in the FIAT/IFTA community, with an opportunity to hear from others and share experiences in the complex area of rights and risk management.
Areas for discussion will include…
- Do PSBs and private broadcasters face the same challenges when providing access to their archive collections?
- Do copyright laws, regulations and rights agreements in different territories allow for commercial and creative re-use of broadcasters’ archive material or are there genuine barriers to access?
- Who controls the rights when independent companies provide services and content to broadcasters and, in instances where rights ownership is uncertain, are broadcasters still obliged to care for and provide access to such content?
- Do archive teams have the necessary rights and licensing expertise to act unilaterally or do they rely on other experts (legal, music, sales, senior management) to provide advice and guidance? How do departments work together and who makes value judgements and decisions on risk when rights agreements are unclear?
- Are the resources and infrastructure in place – such as easy access to rights databases and contracts – to actually enable content to be licensed and used by others?
- How do we help archive customers navigate rights clearances and do our support models differ when re-using archive content in-house versus handling external requests – especially when producers are making for another broadcaster?
- Do archives have clear risk management policies, what are the consequences if something goes wrong and how can risks be mitigated?
Outcomes
- Recording of the workshop to be made available online
- Findings and data to be presented and discussed at 2021 World Conference
- A report and recommended approach to rights/risk to be published 2022
