The study focuses on certain bottlenecks in acquiring licenses for the use of protected works in multimedia products. By studying literature as well as conducting interviews with interested parties and experts, several issues were selected. The study begins with a short overview of the provisions usually contained in a multimedia license, and which are of particular importance in dealing with so-called electronic rights . These are the rights necessary to use a copyrighted work lawfully in an electronic or digital environment, e.g. on a CD-ROM or on a network, such as the Internet.
Rights holders enjoy two rights of exploitation.
Some uncertainty exists, however, on the status of the temporary or ephemeral copy. The Dutch legislator is opposed to a broadening of the scope of the right of reproduction that would cover the sole consuming of copyrighted works. Publications of the European Commission , however, point in an opposite direction. It is not unlikely that in the near future the ephemeral copy will have to be covered by the copyright laws of the Member States of the European Community. Due to previously issued EC Directives on the protection of computer programs and databases , temporary copies of those types of works do fall within the scope of copyright law.