Digitization and provision of (still) rights-protected objects between normative orders and legal design – a scientific survey of working area 1 of the DFG pilot phase

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Achim Bonte; Professorin Dr. Katharina de la Durantaye; Professor Dr. Benjamin Raue
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 564333302

Together with numerous public initiatives and the activities of Google Books, the systematic funding actions of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) are enabling archives, libraries and museums to make an ever broader range of digitized historical sources available to researchers in open access. In view of the comparatively favorable situation for works from the period before 1918, there is a growing expectation on the research side that collecting institutions should also comprehensively digitize their more recent holdings and make them available for academic purposes under the most liberal conditions possible. However, the increased demand resulting from the pluralization of digital research methods is countered by commercial interests and a variety of legal hurdles, which are primarily of a copyright nature, but also concern private and data protection law, among others. In order to provide archives, libraries and museums with a corridor for action to close this gap in a legally secure manner and at the same time to give the DFG precise orientation in the design of its funding program prepared by the pilot phase, the proposed project aims to scientifically survey the legal framework conditions, risks and design options for the digitization and research-related provision of (still) legally protected objects. The focus is on copyright and related rights, the complexity of which - especially in an international and intertemporal dimension - makes the examination of the legal conformity of such activities a considerable challenge for cultural heritage institutions. Specifically, this cross-disciplinary and cross-media exploration, taking into account both published and unpublished materials, is to be carried out on different groups of holdings and lead to the formulation of generic recommendations for action and easy-to-understand guidelines - taking into account the most common usage scenarios in science, research and teaching: At the center of this pilot project is the multimedia estate of photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (died 2003), which has been jointly managed by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (SBB), the Kunstbibliothek - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek since 2018 and which must be considered an extremely difficult legacy not only in ethical terms, but also with regard to the normative dimension. To complete the overall picture from a material and legal perspective, the project also aims to include contemporary art, particularly from the Nationalgalerie’s permanent collection at Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, as well as sound recordings and other database works from the estate of the internationally renowned conductor Claudio Abbado (died 2014), which is also kept at the SBB.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Sam Bardaouil; Till Fellrath
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Moritz Wullen