According to the United States Copyright Law, all “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression” have the right to be copyright protected (n.d, Section 102). However, although the law is straightforward, its application is rather complex, especially nowadays when libraries are getting digitized without acquiring permission from the authors of the books, which consists a copyright violation (Besek, 2003).
A preliminary analysis conducted by the United States Copyright Office, in 2011, deals with the Legal Issues in Mass Digitization and reports that creating a universal digital library could as well be beneficial to both parties, users and copyright owners alike. Books that have been digitized would be more readily accessible to practically everybody with an internet connection, while publishers of out-of-print and older books, alongside authors that are still alive, will gain a place in markets with new audiences pilling up, hence become income sources out of nowhere (United States Copyright Office, 2011). Also, digitizing libraries helps preserving the information contained in the original items, maybe due to the delicate status of the originals or because of their rarity, which inhibit regular use (Foldesi, 2005 p.56). Plus, it provides researchers, students and educational faculty with a huge array of information provided freely over the internet. The problem is how to reach common grounds and find a solution to satisfy both sides.
However, digitizing does not mean stealing other people’s work, even if it is for the sake of the common good, because allowing digitization to take place without permission from copyright owners would provide a wrong model for societies to follow, where it would be perfectly accepted and justified to steal intellectual property. Rules must apply and everybody should abide by them, to maintain the social structure and morals.
That being said, achieving middle ground as a means to keep fairness, could be more challenging that one can imagine. Some people suggest locating the creators of the materials that are about to be digitized and straighten copyright issues. Things get more complicated in cases authors have passed away or are hard to locate to get copyright consent. Anyway, if copyright issues are cleared, institutions face the problem of unauthorized reproduction and information piracy. A solution proposed is to protect digital libraries with a password and watermarking digitized materials, which sound appealing (Sahoo and Rao, 2003). Images can be protected by appropriate software, like SafeImage, that adds watermarks on images (Sahoo and Rao, 2003). Others suggest to reduce the quality of the digitized items, like videos, sound recordings and images, to make them less desirable to own (Rieger, 2008 p.35), which I personally find inappropriate as I believe people that have access to digitized materials deserve to have a good quality item to help them acquire knowledge or assist them to their research. Another interesting option to fight information piracy come the Western States Digital Standards Group that suggests copyright owners that have decided to give their consent for digitalizing their material(s) to have license agreements, to strengthen the digital rights management technologies (2003).
As the world evolves, new technologies come forward to make people’s lives easier, in more ways than one. Digitizing libraries and allowing the entire world, and not just the privileged ones, to have easy and fast access to knowledge is what most philosophers and great gurus would most likely applaud, because societies with more educated individuals promote the community’s wellbeing, alongside individual prosperity. However, everything needs to be done by the book, so we keep the concise structure of our societies and prevent information piracy that breaks the laws for copyright.
References:
United States Copyright Office, Legal Issues in Mass Digitization: A Preliminary Analysis and Discussion Document, 2011. Retrieved from: http://www.copyright.gov/docs/massdigitization/USCOMassDigitization_October2011.pdf
U.S. Copyright Office (n.d.). Copyright law of the United States of America and related laws contained in Title 17 of the United States Code (chap. 1). Retrieved from: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
Besek, J. M. (2003). Copyright issues relevant to the creation of a digital archive: A preliminary assessment. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress. Retrieved from: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub112/pub112.pdf
Foldesi, F. (2005). Digitizing the Corvinas: A cooperative project of the National Szechenyi Library of Hungary [Electronic version]. RBM, 6, 52-56.
Bibhuti Bhusan Sahoo and I.K. Ravichandra Rao, Copyright and Digital Libraries, 2003. Paper K. Retrieved from: http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1849/42/K_copyright-bibhuti.pdf?sequence=2
Rieger Oya, Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization: A White Paper, 2008. Retrieved from: http://www.bib.ub.edu/fileadmin/fdocs/pub141.pdf
Western States Digital Standards Group, Digital Imaging Working Group (2003). Western states digital imaging best practices (Version 1.0). Denver, CO: Author. Retrieved from: http://www.cdpheritage.org/digital/scanning/documents/WSDIBP_v1.pdf
