Libraries are looking for ways to loan digital works while respecting copyright law. There has always been a certain tension between libraries and publishers, because the latter want everyone to pay for a book or article, and if you don't have the money, too bad for you. Libraries, on the other hand, traditionally want to make knowledge available to all. It's the heart of what they are, or what they traditionally have been. But [today] we have new, top-heavy copyright laws...and so libraries have to be careful to set policies that comply with the law. It's hard. Here's the dignified way the NY Public Library does so, posting a notice about copyright law and what it means to you....
If the library can email [an ebook] to me, I can email it right on to you and you and you, or put it on BitTorrent, if I don’t respect the law. Of course, there are a lot of laws that depend on simple compliance. I can kill someone with a knife from my kitchen drawer, if I decide I don’t care about the law forbidding murder, and the knife doesn’t arrive with any kind of device to prevent it. I’m on my honor to keep the law. Not everyone does, of course, but we don’t ban knives, because they are useful for chopping up vegetables. So we rely upon enforcement of the law, not predictive prevention by mechanical means. But with copyright, for some reason it is perceived as not enough....
Draconian DRM is undeniably altering what a library is and how knowledge can be found and used. It alters not only what libraries are like; it alters the way copyright law works, without anyone passing a law....Would you like to see what a more fully DRM-loving library looks like? Take a look at the British Library....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/10/2006 09:56:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
