25/05/2012 Standing Committee
Strasbourg, 25.05.2012 – Europe’s governments should set up digital film libraries and other archives of audiovisual material for education and research purposes, and clarify copyright issues for making it available on the internet, according to PACE’s Standing Committee.
Approving a report by Doris Fiala (Switzerland, ALDE), the committee said that old films and recordings were “vanishing due to their material fragility”. Meanwhile the sheer volume of user-generated audiovisual material on the internet made it impossible to preserve it all. “Appraising, selecting and sampling” material would therefore become a key element for preserving audiovisual cultural heritage. Existing laws should be updated through a new protocol, the parliamentarians said.
The Council of Europe should co-operate with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on strategies to protect, and ensure access to, audiovisual material held by public service broadcasters throughout Europe.