Re: Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

On the basis of my own knowledge of the industry, I would suggest that
most publishers want what they publish to be archived and preserved for
posterity. Some are motivated by other than commercial concerns. Some (not
a discrete category) are urged on by the author community. In the UK the
publishing industry as a whole, including the B2B sector, has supported
the moves towards legal deposit of what is quaintly called non-print
material. The representative bodies have spoken and the leading publishers
in the various sectors are working out the details. The biggest problems
relate to when dark or dim archives become light, where there are
difficulties about the moment when general access to scholars is felt to
be appropriate, but it is a matter of timing rather than a denial of the
principle. In most developed countries there are national schemes of a
similar sort, often backed up by the force of law. In the US there is no
national approach, but is there any evidence that publishers are not
motivated by the same concerns? The key STM publishers in the US are
taking part in the various Mellon schemes and I understand that there is a
fair amount of consensus. What Chuck is suggesting is all conditional. It
is speculation. Publishers are acting to make their publications available
to posterity. Is there any evidence that they are preventing fair use?

Anthony Watkinson
Visiting Professor in Information Science at City University London

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>
To: "'Rick Anderson '" <rickand@unr.edu>; <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 7:46 PM
Subject: RE: Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales

> The issues over security on CD's and other digital content impacts the
> library responsibility for preserving content over time. The developments
> bear watching closely, as the law and hardware and software available to
> us in the next generation of pc's may make some of the functions we can
> perform under current copyright law null and void in the so called digital
> rights management environment. Technological and legal "solutions" to the
> fear of piracy may mean severe technological barriers to long term
> preservation and access to many forms of Intellectual Property whose
> primary sale or access is in digital form.  In addition to control over
> how consumers "listen watch and store their digital media" comes the
> ability to make it impossible legally and technically to preserve access
> to that same content for future generations. Add to the technological
> barriers the massive extension of copyright and I think we have a cultural
> disaster in the making, a recipe for loss of our heritage that will be
> devastating.
>
> My snips from this article betray my bias--It's not news that the IP
> industry wants to control what we can do with "their" content. It is news
> that slowly there are begining to be reasonable voices raised against the
> industry's attempts to change law and technology to limit use to the uses
> IP owners consider legitimate.
>
> I see this issue as part and parcel of the issues we face every day in
> licensing digital content. If the current proposals for control of digital
> content become the law of the land, our job as repositories and carriers
> of culture may be trumped by hardware, software and law. DMCA was just a
> beginning for what the intellectual property industry has in store for us
> IMO.
>
> You may have to look to Russia in 75 years to have access to Orrin Hatch's
> music.
>
>
> Chuck
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Anderson
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Sent: 4/19/02 7:41 PM
> Subject: RE: Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales
>
> Although I'm not sure what this article has to do with licensing issues in
> libraries, I found it interesting.  Especially the parts Chuck snipped
> out, which offer the other side's perspective on this contentious issue.