ment’ states:
“Librarians and information professionals recognise, and are committed to support the needs of their patrons to gain access to copyright works and the information and ideas they contain. They also respect the needs of authors and copyright owners to obtain a fair economic return on their intellectual property. Effective access is essential in achieving copyright’s objectives. IFLA supports balanced copyright law that promotes the advancement of society as a whole by giving strong and effective protection for the interests of rightsholders as well as reasonable access in order to encourage creativity, innovation, research, education and learning.”
The importance of copyright balance and the role of the library
There are many supporters of strong intellectual property rights today. Media companies and their trade associations view ever increased rights for copyright owners as the best way to maximize their potential revenue. It is somewhat harder, however, to find equally prominent defenders of the other half of the copyright balance, namely the needs of the public to have reasonable legitimate access to copyright material. This can be attributed to some degree to the fact that many advocates of stronger rights for copyright owners have a financial interest in such an outcome. The wider public interest in being able to access this material is more diffuse and usually has no direct economic motive and so is less likely to attract professional advocates. The library sector, however, is proud to view itself as a custodian of the public interest in this regard.
Libraries are major purchasers of copyright protected works, both analogue and digital, and make such works available for patrons to browse, read and use. Librarians and information professionals do, where possible and to the best of their ability, protect against copyright abuse of library material in collections.
Access to knowledge is vital for a number of reasons:
- A full and comprehensive exchange of information is necessary for the functioning of a healthy democracy. A society which is unable to access the knowledge required for a proper discussion of political, social, environmental or economic issues will not be able to achieve the kind of broad consensus upon which a healthy society is based;
- A rich public domain and fair access to copyright protected material enhances creativity and the production of new works. It is often assumed that economic growth benefits from ever-stronger intellectual property rights while some concession must be made to copyright exceptions for purely social reasons. In fact this is a false dichotomy. Many industries require access to copyright material for the purposes of research and development, education, software or hardware interoperability. A lack of reasonable access can actually hurt economic growth.
- Fair access to material in copyright can help to mitigate the digital divide. If access to knowledge is dependent upon an individual’s capacity to pay, then the less privileged will be placed at a significant disadvantage. In particular, this can play a part in perpetuating poverty and the lack of educational opportunities.
The limits of copyright
A balance between the interests of copyright owners in receiving fair reward for their efforts and the interests of copyright users in receiving reasonable access to copyright materials has been traditionally maintained in a number of ways. One of the most important of these is the implementation of a series of limitations and exceptions to the exclusive rights of copyright owners, which is the subject of this submission. However, there are other important limits, besides exceptions, on the control over knowledge that copyright imposes, some of which are being weakened in the digital environment.
These limits are:
- Duration of copyright
- Limited suite of rights
- Subject matter
Duration of copyright
Copyright has a limited duration, after which copyright material enters the public domain and may be freely used by anyone for any purpose. This is a very important aspec