decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more... 		decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

You won't find me on Facebook

Donate

Donate Paypal

No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.

What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments

Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
The British Library Gets It!
Monday, September 25 2006 @ 04:04 PM EDT

Finally! Somebody gets it that DRM is altering the copyright law bargain, by not allowing fair dealing/fair use. And it's the British Library that is speaking out and saying that the same rules of the road should apply in the digital world as they have always done. Copyright law includes fair use/fair dealing, and there will be incalculable damage if copyright law in the digital environment doesn't retain those limitations on the copyright owner's rights. The Library has issued an IP Manifesto [PDF]. I wish to say thank you to the British Library for issuing this document.

The IP Manifesto's key recommendations include, quoting from the press release:
* Existing limitations and exceptions to copyright law should be extended to encompass unambiguously the digital environment;

* Licenses providing access to digital material should not undermine longstanding limitations and exceptions such as ‘fair dealing';

* The right to copy material for preservation purposes – a core duty of all national libraries – should be extended to all copyrightable works;

* The copyright term for sound recordings should not be extended without empirical evidence of the benefits and due consideration of the needs of society as a whole;

* The US model for dealing with ‘orphan works' should be considered for the UK;

* The length of copyright term for unpublished works should be brought into line with other terms (ie: life plus 70 years).

In other words, copyright law should not change in the digital environment, and if it doesn't change, then fair dealing and fair use are just as applicable there. Here's the press release. This sentence says it all: "Licenses providing access to digital material should not undermine longstanding limitations and exceptions such as ‘fair dealing.'" And here's another angle to the story.

I am so thrilled, I can't even express myself. And you know how rare that is! You may recall that I wrote a lengthy article detailing exactly what DRM was like and what it was doing to their collection and accessibility of the world's knowledge, The British Library - The world's knowledge DRM'd and for a price," and I did hear from them about the article, so if I contributed to today's result in any small part at all, I can die happy. Of course, it is Larry Lessig who first noticed the problem and made it an issue for us all to consider.

You know how I always tell you that the law often moves to a better place as people get to understand new issues? It's happening. I see it. And I am glad.


  


The British Library Gets It! | 119 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Here
Authored by: feldegast on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 04:55 PM EDT
If needed.

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2006 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic Thread
Authored by: MathFox on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 04:58 PM EDT
Other Legal and Open Source issues.
Please post links in HTML mode

---
If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within
itself, then it is inconsistent.

[ Reply to This | # ]

$$ and corporations
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 05:05 PM EDT
This library's voice will be drowned by corporation lobbying and astroturfing,
PJ. Sad, but true.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The British Library Gets It!
Authored by: Stephen on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 05:12 PM EDT

What do they mean by the "US model" for orphaned works? I was under the impression that US orphaned works simply stayed copyrighted, making it impossible for society to gain the full benefit of them. It compounds the problem that copyright duration is ever-increasing (thanks to Disney and the Gershwin heirs), since there is no way to license orphaned works and they stay locked away from society.

Am I misunderstanding what the British Library wants, or are they misunderstanding the US copyright system?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cliff Richard
Authored by: Nick_UK on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 05:43 PM EDT
I can see why he is worried - he will lose out!

An old UK joke; "...it will be easier to pass a camel
through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter
heaven" - well, Cliff Richard is ****** then!

Seriously, why doesn't he just say it needs keeping
for 'keeping' sake if he is really serious in preserving
this archive instead of moaning about what 'others' get.

Nick

[ Reply to This | # ]

What's wrong with DRM?
Authored by: billmason on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 05:58 PM EDT
Maybe someone can help me understand this. I've been following the DRM debate
since the beginning, hoping I would understand it, and I still don't.

It seems to me DRM is nothing more than negotiation between the hardware
manufacturer and the content providers, for the former to only work with the
latter as long as it's "genuine." The medium is being tweaked in
order to prevent copying. This doesn't disallow fair use, it only limits the
mediums on which it can be consumed or copied.

It's as if I wrote a song and released it only on some special medium for which
there is no technology available to copy it. It's up to me as the content
provider which medium I support, no? Just because you don't have the technology
to copy it doesn't mean that your fair use rights have been taken away.

Of course, if there are laws against creating such technology, then those laws
and only those laws are taking away your fair use rights.

Am I missing something?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The British Library Gets It!
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 06:30 PM EDT
All this nonsense of restricting access to libraries for fair use and perpetual records could be as effective and offensive as the destruction/s of the Library of Alexandria

[ Reply to This | # ]

Dali?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 06:33 PM EDT
rgds

[ Reply to This | # ]

The British Library Gets It!
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 06:37 PM EDT
PJ writes: "You know how I always tell you that the law often moves to a
better place as people get to understand new issues? It's happening. I see it.
And I am glad."

But the article doesn't really have an example of that does it? It's more an
example of somebody merely complaining about the law as it stands; which is
different from the law itself "moving".

Did I overlook something?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The all important issue of file formats missing?
Authored by: ws on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 06:44 PM EDT
As the title says, I didn't see it in the manifesto.

It's still going to be an issue, unless they also explicitly say that
"format conversions" is also allowed to ensure that the content can be
accessed for posterity as well.

ws

[ Reply to This | # ]

...ultimately the people's job..?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 07:01 PM EDT
[What's wrong with DRM.]

Yes, that's the theory. Governmental power in a democracy ultimately flows from
the people. In theory.

Sites like Groklaw may alert the people to "what's going wrong" with
industry and government, so that the people can take the necessary corrective
action. Because of the power of incumbency (corporate & government)
effective change from the people at large can be difficult to accomplish, and
when it is accomplished it is not in the short term. When some law goes
"wrong" that may take decades or longer to fix via corrective action
"by the people", I'm sure they may be forgiven for feeling an
injustice has been done.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The British Library Gets It!
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 07:12 PM EDT
> You have the right to copy it, if only you could figure out how. Your
inability to copy is not equivalent to a lack of right to copy.
--------------

DRM might be arbitrarily hard to crack but I'm not sure how useful this point
is. It seems a distinction without a difference. At any rate, in the US,
doesn't the DCMA remove any legal right to circumvent copy protection
measures?

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Licenses ... should not ... undermine ..."
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 08:59 PM EDT
I don't really get what this means, that licenses should not undermine fair use.
Does that mean that the law should require licenses to preserve fair use? Does
it mean that DRM that blocks fair use should be illegal? (Technically, I can't
imagine DRM that allows fair use but blocks any other use.) I don't understand
what exactly they're suggesting here.

[ Reply to This | # ]

British Library Direct
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 09:15 PM EDT
Have you tried their British Library Direct (document delivery) service?
Excellent service with functional DRM:

http://direct.bl.uk/bld/Home.do

[ Reply to This | # ]

The British Library Gets Part of It!
Authored by: polymath on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 10:45 PM EDT
The news release only makes reference to fair use and archiving.

The original intent of copyright law was to give creators an opportunity to
profit from their work by having a limited monopoly. In turn society benefits
by have those works entering the public domain when that monopoly expires. DRM
does not expire and this breaks the compact. If copyright is perpetual (or so
long that on expiration the vast majority of works are without interest) there
is no quid pro quo. Society incurs considerable cost in creating and
maintaining copyright and pays a monopoly premium during copyright. It must be
compensated. That compensation is the free availablity of the work at a future
date.

The benefit of fair use and archival devolve to a small minority. It is free
use in the public domain at a time beneficial to all that is the overriding
issue.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Maybe they will see that Software Patents are a bad for digital copyright as well? MS owns DRM.
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 26 2006 @ 09:17 AM EDT
Maybe they will see that Software Patents are a bad for digital copyright as
well?

Really, the use of software patents, does sit like a cloud on the pure title of
the copyrighted work.

Patents on technology to "create digital works" (software or the
products of software) can be controlled by controlling access to the technology
that the digital arts require for their exisitence. Certain Patents effectively
have the rights to certain digitial creative work tools, the formats that are
dependent on the digital technologies that are either patented or the software
that creates the "copyrighted art in a certain format is thus affected and
not free of a link to the patented format or software", thus resulting in
the art being exposed to being encumbered and controlled - in a monopoly sense,
much like the ability to contolling a genre, where this control is no less than
absolute!

Microsoft own much of the technology patents in the world for DRM. They have
been patenting all kinds of elements of DRM themselves, and they have been
buying companies that have these patents as well, is the the keyhole that they
wish to use to extend their monopoly from the technology world into the content
world.
Unless the patents on software are eliminated, then there is no stopping
Microsoft as they can license the technology and to others, collect royalites,
and by not creating the software themselves be free of anti-trust competition
where they would be seen as creating technlogy that drives others out of
business.


[ Reply to This | # ]
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.04 seconds