A/HRC/58/60 especially marginalized communities, can engage with digital cultural heritage. There should be more focus on ensuring that rural, Indigenous and marginalized communities have affordable and equitable access to digital technologies. States and international organizations should establish publicly accessible digital libraries and archives that offer free access to cultural content, with priority given to underserved populations. This would ensure that digital heritage is not restricted to those with the most economic power or technological resources. However, people should not be obliged to have Internet connections in order to have access to cultural heritage. In addition, digital archives should include materials that represent diverse cultural perspectives, with special attention given to ensuring that minority and Indigenous cultures are adequately represented. 50. There should be more support for digital literacy programmes that help communities to build the skills necessary to engage with digital heritage. These programmes would not only teach individuals how to access and navigate existing digital platforms but also help them to create and share their own cultural content in the digital realm. G. Addressing open access to digital cultural heritage 51. The mandate holder has already drawn attention to significant challenges concerning copyright, patents and the public domain.75 At the outset, the Special Rapporteur recalls that the human right to protection of authorship, provided for under article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is not simply a synonym for, or reference to, copyright protection, but a related concept against which copyright law regimes should be judged. Protection of authorship as a human right requires in some ways more and in other ways less than what is currently found in the copyright laws of most countries. 76 52. In general, the intersection of open access and copyright poses several challenges for cultural rights. Establishing mechanisms that protect the moral and material interests of creators without unnecessarily limiting public access to creative works is a challenge that is often resolved by exceptions, limitations and subsidies of openly licensed works. Protecting the rights of groups or collectives to pass their cultural expressions down through generations and to develop and transmit their cultural heritage in a rather individualistic system of intellectual property system is also a challenge. Finally, ensuring that cultural rights are maintained after digitalization has already occurred, in other words, deciding on how access is granted, how heritage is stored, when heritage digitalization is re-evaluated and by whom, and who gets to benefit from it must be an ongoing reflective exercise. 53. Open access to digital cultural heritage presents multiple advantages. It involves making heritage materials, such as collections of museums, libraries and archives, and their associated metadata, freely available online for broad access, sharing and reuse, including possibly for commercial applications. 77 Open access implies the leveraging of digital technologies with a view to protecting the public domain from erosion and using open licences, such as CC0 or CC BY, to clearly establish permissions for access and reuse. Open access fosters the democratization of cultural heritage by enabling equitable access, allowing broader public engagement, fostering scientific, artistic and other kinds of creativity, and encouraging collaboration, to the extent that people have access to the Internet and are aware of how to search for these resources. If used as a standard for all digitized heritage assets, open access can contribute to promoting and preserving diversity. However, open access is not a panacea as some would suggest; it can only democratize access to cultural heritage if the Internet is accessible, and this is not always the case, especially in remote and marginalized communities. 54. Data sovereignty is a key issue. Communities whose heritage is digitized should retain control over their cultural data and be involved in further digitalization processes, while still allowing for open access to digital cultural heritage. Ensuring data sovereignty also allows 75 76 77 14 See www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-cultural-rights/impact-intellectual-property-regimesenjoyment-right-science-and-culture; see also A/HRC/28/57 and A/70/279 and A/70/279/Corr.1. A/HRC/28/57, para. 29. See also Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 17 (2005), paras. 1–3. See, for example, https://creativecommons.org/. GE.25-01705