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the French (unpublished) agreements to a significantly greater degree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-la-bibliotheque-nationale-de-france

ActuaLitté has extendly covered these positions :
http://www.actualitte.com/usages/refuser-la-privatisation-du-domaine-public-par-la-bnf-39680.htm
http://www.actualitte.com/usages/bnf-vendre-le-domaine-public-n-est-pas-le-role-de-ses-gestionnaires-39673.htm

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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