[Upd-discuss] Canadian Legal Deposit versus Digital Rights Management

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

Centuries-Old Library Program Enters the 21st Century
Tuesday January 16, 2007
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1612/159/

Appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on January 16, 2007 as Centuries-Old
Library
Program Enters the 21st Century

In 1537, French King Francis I launched an ambitious initiative to
collect
and preserve all documents published in France.  To achieve his
objective,
he enacted a law requiring all publishers to submit copies of their
publications to the Crown. The practice of mandatory publication
deposits,
which later became known as legal deposit, caught on as many countries
sought to preserve their heritage by establishing similar requirements.

Canada introduced mandatory legal deposit in 1953, requiring publishers
to
provide copies of all published books to the National Library of Canada.
Over the past 54 years, the system has gradually expanded, adding serial
publications in 1965, sound recordings in 1969, multi-media kits in
1978,
microforms in 1988, CD-ROMs and video recordings in 1993, and electronic
publications on all types of physical formats in 1995. While enforcement
of
legal deposit is viewed as a last resort, the Criminal Code includes
provisions for those publishers that fail to comply.   

With little fanfare, the rules for legal deposit have gradually been
adapted
to the Internet and digital technologies.  In 2004, the government
granted
the Library and Archives Canada, the successor the National Library, the
right to sample web pages in an effort to preserve noteworthy Canadian
websites.  The Internet sampling provision has been used to gather
copies of
political party websites as well as a handful of notable blogs.

As of January 1st of this year, the rules have changed yet again as
Canadian
Heritage Minister Bev Oda introduced new regulations to accommodate the
emergence of online publications and to address the concerns raised by
digital technologies that potentially impede access.

The regulations broadly define publisher as any person "who makes a
publication available in Canada that the person is authorized to
reproduce
or over which the person controls the content." In order to avoid
thousands
of bloggers rushing to submit their blog postings to the LAC, the
regulations do not require publishers to deposit blog postings, email
correspondence or other press releases (though the LAC has the right to
request these documents or such content could be submitted voluntarily).
 

Instead, the rules focus on online material that is considered to be in
"publication" form.  The LAC notes that online publications usually have
a
distinct title, a specific author or authoring body, a specific date and
are
intended for public consumption.  Examples include books, magazines,
annual
reports, research papers, and scholarly journals.  

As part of the deposit process, publishers can choose between open
access,
which allows the public to view and download the publication through the
Internet, or restricted access, which limits public access to selected
computer terminals at the LAC's main building in Ottawa.  The LAC
encourages
publishers to select open access whenever possible.

The latest changes will require many online-only publishers to begin
submitting their publications to the LAC.  The rules disappointingly
stop
short of requiring all publishers to submit electronic versions of
paper-based documents, however.  Such a requirement should be considered
in
the future to facilitate the creation of a national digital library.

The new rules also address mounting concern about the potential impact
of
digital locks (known as digital rights management or DRM) to deny future
generations access to the publications in digital form.  DRM has been
viewed
as a threat by many within the library community, who fear that they and
their patrons may literally be locked out of digital works as DRM
systems
are used to restrict otherwise legitimate access or become obsolete.

In response, Ottawa has implicitly acknowledged that the DRM-related
concerns necessitate legal intervention.  The regulations now require
publishers to decrypt encrypted data contained in a publication and to
remove or disable systems designed to restrict or limit access to the
publication before submitting it to the LAC.  Moreover, publishers are
required to also provide the LAC with a copy of the software necessary
to
access the publication, the technical information necessary for access,
and
any "meta-data" associated with the electronic publication.   

These regulations mark the first time that the Canadian government has
stepped in to protect the public interest against the potential negative
consequences of DRM.  Given these new legal deposit program provisions,
thousands of libraries across Canada may soon demand similar protections
for
their electronic publication collections, which now account for as much
as
25 percent of library budgets.

The policy goal of legal deposit - namely preservation of a country's
published heritage for present and future generations - has remained
largely
unchanged over the past 470 years.  The latest developments help ensure
that
the program is as effective in the digital world as it was in the day of
King Francis I.

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce
Law
at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at
mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

----
Zapopan Martín Muela Meza
doctorando Estudios Informacion, University of Sheffield
<http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/research/groups/lib/people.html >

co-editor para Mexico de E-LIS: Documentos E-prints en Bibliotecologia y Documentacion
<http://eprints.rclis.org/perl/user?userid=1417 >

miembro del Grupo Internacional de Investigacion Copia / Sur
<http://www.copysouth.org >
<http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006278/ >

miembro de la "Red Internacional en Defensa del Conocimiento y la Cultura para Todos"
<http://www.porlacultura.org/index.php >

"Solo son verdaderas personas
quienes arrancan al hombre las cadenas
que sujetan su razon."
--Maximo Gorki, novela La Madre, cap. XVII, parte I


 
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