So you decided to go through with this? That's great! 

Before we continue with some practical stuff you'll have to know more about the way we handle collections. No matter what you institution is savegarding or showcasing, chances are that your data consists of objects and something we call metadata. Metadata are the descriptive tags you add to the objects in your database to provide them with context and improve searchability. Metadata can inlcude any kind of describing data like dates, names of authors, geographical information, etc. 

For opening up your collections, we make the distinction between objects and metadata because they generally have a different set of rights attached to them. In most cases, the objects in your collection will be created by others. This means that copyright to these works does not belong to your institution, but to a large number of different authors. This can make it quite hard to make these objects available as open data. If you don't the intellectual property rights to a work, you'll have to ask permission of those who do before you can make it public in a new way.

For metadata however this will seldom be the case. The metadata will mostly be created by your own institution and it isn't even always clear if metadata is subject to copyright or not. To establish copyright, there is some sort of personal input from the creator required. When we are talking about factual data like dates, names, etc., the general rule is that they aren't copyrightable. When the metadata includes more elaborate descriptions that transcend factuality, copyright could be involved, but when you wrote the descriptions yourself, you own the copyright and it's up to you to share this data with whoever you want. 

Copyright is a fairly complicated topic though, as it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This makes it almost impossible to write an universal challenge on the copyright issues in cultural collections and open data. However there are some common ground rules that can to be understood before opening cultural data. These include the distinction between content and metadata, multilayers of copyright, the distinction between a reproduction and a new work and most importantly the duration of copyright protection.

Copyright protection is temporary. It protects a creator of a work for a certain perdiod of time. In Europe this term is harmonised at 70 years after the dead of the longest living author. Worldwide however it varies per jurisdiction. Mexico for example grants protection up until 100 years after the dead of longest living author, whereas China only grants protection for 30 years after publication.

When copyright expires a work falls in the public domain. Everyone can freely copy and distribute a public domain work without having to ask permission of the rights holder of a work. Check the term of protection in your own country to see which works can be freely copied and distributed in your country. Cultural institutions cannot claim copyright on works that have fallen into the public domain.

Almost everything can be copyright protected, as long as it meets certain criteria. What is considered a copyrightable work differs per jurisdiction, for the purpose of this challenge we will assume that all cultural data, images and metadata, are copyright protected. We have to assume this because open data is likely to be used internationally and we need to clearly communicate that a work is usable for everyone.