Luxembourg, 29 June 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

The EC has published a research report on the PSI re-use in the cultural sector. The report was written by Genevieve Clapton, Max Hammond, and Nick Poole, by Curtis+Cartwright Consulting.

The purpose of the research was to investigate the extent, type and financial significance of re-use of PSI by cultural institutions in Europe. This as an input for the current Review of the PSI Directive. The cultural sector does not fall within the scope of the current PSI Directive, and one of the discussion points is whether it should.

The objectives of the study were to

• estimate the importance of re-use in terms of revenues for cultural institutions
• estimate trends in the development of the re-use market for cultural material.

Overall the revenue resulting from PSI re-use for cultural institutions in relatively limited, from close to zero to a maximum of 11%. Not all of this revenue comes from 3rd party re-use, which in the cases studied ranged from 10% to 80% of the revenue on re-use.

Institutions indicate that the current revenue, while not dependent on it as an institution, is important to enable future re-use and further development of services.

Re-use of content is important to institutions regardless of whether it generates revenue or not, and digitalizing is a key factor in making re-use possible. At the same time the digitalization process is the most limiting factor, in terms of cost and effort, to enable re-use.

Concerns expressed by the institutions contributing to the study have to do with unfamiliarity of the PSI Directive, the applicability of the PSI Directive in its current wording to the cultural sector, and concerns over reduced income and increasing administrative overhead if the PSI Directive would be applied.

The full report is available for download as pdf, and embedded below.