Wipo Holds International Workshop on Digital Preservation and Copyright

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), in cooperation with the International Digital Preservation and Copyright initiative (IDPC), organized a one-day workshop to assess recent developments and trends at the intersection of digital preservation and copyright. Anne Louise Schelin from the Danish union of journalists participated on behalf of the IFJ. With the development of electronic libraries and the wide use of copyright material by search engines the need to define ways to reproduce copyright protected material is rampant. "From an intellectual property perspective, the preservation of digital materials raises copyright issues in ways that analog preservation does not", says WIPO. "Because copyright exceptions pertaining to digital preservation are not uniform throughout the world, copyright law has different effects upon digital preservation in different jurisdictions. The copyright-digital preservation interface also varies depending upon the nature and source of the content, whether it is in the public domain, and whether cooperative agreements between rights holders and preservationists can be achieved". Organisations from Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States recently released an IDPC Study. The document reviews the current state of play of world copyright laws and their impact on digital preservation. It makes recommendations for legislative reform and/or practical solutions to ensure that cultural heritage institutions can effectively preserve digital culture and information without conflicting with the normal exploitation of copyrighted works. It also makes recommendations for future study or activities to further such recommendations. Read IFJ statement