That isn’t me talking, that is the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress along with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, and the SURFfoundation released a report (pdf) on Monday that basically states just that.
The stated purpose of the report is:
- to review the current state of copyright and related laws and their impact on digital preservation;
- to make recommendations for legislative reform and other solutions to ensure that libraries, archives and other preservation institutions can effectively preserve digital works and information in a manner consistent with international laws and norms of copyright and related rights; and
- to make recommendations for further study or activities to advance the recommendations in the Report.
The key is number 2, “to make recommendations for legislative reform…” From the release on digitalpreservation.gov:
As the laws of the countries discussed in the report demonstrate, in many cases exceptions and limitations do not accommodate the actions required for digital preservation.
Now, the recommendation doesn’t just simply state that anyone who wants to preserve information can do so. So no, you won’t have the LOC on your side if you are sued for “preserving” media on your home machine which you do not have legal right to possess it.
From the report:
[These suggestions should] apply to all non-profit libraries, archives, museums and other institutions as may be authorized by national law (hereafter, “preservation institutions”) that are open to the public, provided they do not undertake these activities for any purpose of commercial advantage.
These institutions would be able to (1) reproduce as many copies as necessary for effective preservation, (2) transfer those copies to other formats as standards progress, (3) “communicate” those works within and between various preservation repositories to maintain redundancy.
Why did the Library of Congress et. al produce this report? Because without some changes to the current status qua of copyright law libraries and archives will be unable to exercise one of their most important roles in our society: preservation.
[In the current US copyright system] there is no specific authorization for libraries and archives to make preservation copies of published works in their collections.
If you are at all interested in learning more about how copyright effects the preservation of our society’s knowledge, you should read the report. Plus, for those of you who thought that librarians are just quiet subservient employees of the state that don’t speak up for our rights; think again. Librarians are at the front of cultural freedom as any other group, if not more.
So how exactly does copyright law apply to ISPs and such? When I sent an e-mail, it makes several jumps to several different servers before it reaches its destination. I can’t point to any particular piece of evidence, but I most certainly recall hearing that the e-mail is not deleted-without-a-trace after it departs one server for the next. Of course, the contents of my e-mail (and my blog post comments :) are copyrighted materials, and only the intended recipient has any right to it as I understand copyright law…
Posted by Wolfger on July 19th, 2008.
[...] to Greg and his blog post for the story. Some of you have seen his post already, but I have several friends and readers who [...]
Posted by Matthew Helmke (dot) Net » What is more important to the human race? on July 19th, 2008.
Wolfger: you’re right in your thinking and that exposes one of the main flaws with copyright law in the “information age.” If you were following the law to the letter, then every “copy” of your email/blog post would be an infringement (both to harddisk, ram, cpu cache, network card cache, videocard memory, etc).
Luckily, people aren’t THAT dumb. They are close to that dumb, but not quit. The reason it doesn’t really come up is that if there is a case of infringement on a computer, the people sue for the unlawful replication that they can prove; like the song on your harddisk. I believe, but have no basis for, that if the suing entity then told the judge they wanted to multiply the damages by 6 because the infringer’s computer made a copy in memory 6 times because that is how many times they played it, the judge _probably_ wouldn’t let that fly.
Also, ISPs are considered a “safe harbor” under the DMCA; check out the Chilling Effects website FAQ: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi
Posted by Greg on July 19th, 2008.
Greg: I think in the case of email delivery, fair use comes into play.
Fair use says that some uses are legal even though they’re not explicitly allowed. Backups of material you are already licensed to are covered by fair use, even if (for instance) a piece of software’s EULA says otherwise. I’m pretty sure email delivery falls under this as well.
Unfortunately it’s not very well spelled-out, but you should be aware of your rights under fair use as they supercede regular copyright restrictions in many cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Posted by Phil on July 21st, 2008.
[...] to Greg and his blog post for the story. Some of you have seen his post already, but I have several friends and readers who [...]
Posted by Matthew Helmke: What is more important to the human race? | Christian eBuddy Blog on July 22nd, 2008.
[...] recorded first by timelessinfinitude on 2009-02-24→ Greg Grossmeier: Preservation Entities Should Ignore Copyright [...]
Posted by Recent URLs tagged Standards - Urlrecorder on April 7th, 2009.