corsairs and pirates http://www.ilpost.it/carloblengino/2013/01/21/corsari_pubblicodominio/ My two cents Inviato da iPad2 Il giorno 19/gen/2013, alle ore 10:29, Philippe Aigrain <philippe.aigrain@sopinspace.com> ha scritto:
Dear all,
A small point of information on what be of interest to all of you.
For several years, the French National Library BnF (as well as the French National Audiovisual Institut INA) have been engaged in negotiating public-private partnerships for digitizing part of their collections. These agreements receive public funding through a stimulus plan (named "grand emprunt" = "great loan" under the former government and "investissements d'avenir" = "investments for the future" under the new government).
The agreements regard collections that include public domaiun material, orphan works, out-of-publication works and commercially distribued works, with different provisions.
For now two years, a debate developed, first in 2011 in specialized international circles of library digitizing policy, then through coverage by the on-line media ActuaLitté (http://www.actualitte.com/) and by myself, in particular on the specifics of agreements regarding public domain material.
On 15 January 2013, just during the wave of emotion surrounding the death of Aaron Swartz, the Ministry of culture, the Commissariat à l'investissement and BNF announced the signature of two agreements regarding respectively ancient books (incunables and books until 1700) with ProQuest and 78 and 33rpm sound recordings of patrimonial value (only part being public domain) with Believe. These agreements create 10 years of commercial exclusive rights for the private party, the library being authorized to distribute on-line only 5% of the works, and to give access to the rest when digitized only in its premises (during the 10 years).
Similar agreements exist in other countries, in particular in the UK, but it should be noted that, according to information published by the signatories, the rights of the public and libraries are tramped upon by the French (unpublished) agreements to a significantly greater degree than in the Google Books agreements, even though the new policy is supposed to represent an alternative.
I have published an analysis on 16 January http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6333 (in French) stressing that the agreements constitute a privatization of the public domain, are in contradiction with the Europeana Charter (the President of BNF also chairs Europeana) and with the recommandations of the European Commission Comité des Sages, and of course with COMMUNIA Public Domain Manifesto and recommandations.
I also analyzed how the public private partnerships are likely to be economically more costly for the government than procurement for digitizing under the library own terms, and called to their immediate publication, their cancellation. I stressed that there were likely to result in French-speaking public domain material being mostly available from societal projects (Internet Archive, Gutenberg, WikiSource, UbuWeb and P2P file sharing) or from the US DPLA. I also stressed that it was every citizen's right and duty to share widely the works digitized under these agreements or by others that would enter in one's possession (by legal means) as to prevent the privatization of the public domain. And that if technology or legal artifacts were used to prevent entry in possession of these files by their users, they should be legally and politically challenged.
Yesterday, 6 organisations published a press release also demanding publication and cancellation of these public-private partnerships : COMMUNIA association, Regards Citoyens, Open Knowledge Foundation France, Framasoft, SavoirCom1 and La Quadrature du Net : http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/non-a-la-privatisation-du-domaine-public-par-...
ActuaLitté has extendly covered these positions : http://www.actualitte.com/usages/refuser-la-privatisation-du-domaine-public-... http://www.actualitte.com/usages/bnf-vendre-le-domaine-public-n-est-pas-le-r...
Specific calls have started to be published by librarians against the agreements, including calls to sharing public domain digitized material, though many express sympathy in private byr are still hesitating to speak out publicly due to "duty of reserve" requirements for civil servants.
International support will be appreciated. Our apologies for not having had time to provide English translations of all our materials. Feel free to produce translations yourselves.
Best regards,
Philippe Aigrain
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