A good while back I wrote about carve-outs or exceptions – and how they’re made. It’s an important, if much ignored topic. One area I didn’t mention was exceptions for the powerful. Like those queues at the airport where ‘VIPs’ and those flying business and first get to go ahead of everyone else. Now these can be efficiency enhancing. But they’re also pretty obviously equality degrading. And so we have a tradeoff. It’s a similar tradeoff to the one made where one targets welfare. If you target welfare, you get greater efficiency in the short run. Maybe you can get it in the medium run also, but with what the Americans call the “middle class” not getting the benefits an important constituency is lost and the benefits might eventually fail to muster the necessary political support to survive.
And I’ve been doing some work in copyright. Here, to address the litany of ways in which our copyright law has become obsolete in the face of new digital technology we’ve been adding sections to our Copyright Act at a ferocious rate. Large parts of it now resemble the Income Tax Act in complexity. I reproduce Section 49 governing libraries and archives copying stuff (mainly) for researchers over the fold. It’s 1,600 words. It requires copies that are made by scanning in documents to be destroyed after the copy has been supplied to the researcher. It’s a nightmare that would require legal advice, possibly elaborate legal advice to be effectively used by a library.
But the Parliamentary Library. Well that’s an exception. The relevant section the nomenclature of which gives it away as a special insertion into the original act reads as follows.
48A Copying by Parliamentary libraries for members of Parliament
The copyright in a work is not infringed by anything done, for the sole purpose of assisting a person who is a member of a Parliament in the performance of the person’s duties as such a member, by an authorized officer of a library, being a library the principal purpose of which is to provide library services for members of that Parliament.
As you can see, the subsequent S49 is somewhat more extensively hedged with qualifications and procedures:
49 Reproducing and communicating works by libraries and archives for users
(1) A person may furnish to the officer in charge of a library or archives:
(a) a request in writing to be supplied with a reproduction of an article, or a part of an article, contained in a periodical publication or of the whole or a part of a published work other than an article contained in a periodical publication, being a periodical publication or a published work held in the collection of a library or archives; and
(b) a declaration signed by him or her stating:
(i) that he or she requires the reproduction for the purpose of research or study and will not use it for any other purpose; and
(ii) that he or she has not previously been supplied with a reproduction of the same article or other work, or the same part of the article or other work, as the case may be, by an authorized officer of the library or archives.(2) Subject to this section, where a request and declaration referred to in subsection (1) are furnished to the officer in charge of a library or archives, an authorized officer of the library or archives may, unless the declaration contains a statement that to his or her knowledge is untrue in a material particular, make, or cause to be made, the reproduction to which the request relates and supply the reproduction to the person who made the request.
Note: The reproduction could be made from another reproduction of the article or published work in the collection of the library or archives that was made without infringing copyright because of subsection 51A(1), to replace the article or published work because it was damaged, had deteriorated or had been lost or stolen.
(2A) A person may make to an authorized officer of a library or archives:
(a) a request to be supplied with a reproduction of an article, or part of an article, contained in a periodical publication, or of the whole or a part of a published work other than an article contained in a periodical publication, being a periodical publication or a published work held in the collection of a library or archives; and
(b) a declaration to the effect that:
(i) the person requires the reproduction for the purpose of research or study and will not use it for any other purpose;
(ii) the person has not previously been supplied with a reproduction of the same article or other work, or the same part of the article or other work, as the case may be, by an authorized officer of the library or archives; and
(iii) by reason of the remoteness of the person’s location, the person cannot conveniently furnish to the officer in charge of the library or archives a request and declaration referred to in subsection (1) in relation to the reproduction soon enough to enable the reproduction to be supplied to the person before the time by which the person requires it.
(2B) A request or declaration referred to in subsection (2A) is not required to be made in writing.
(2C) Subject to this section, where:
(a) a request and declaration referred to in subsection (2A) are made by a person to an authorized officer of a library or archives; and
(b) the authorized officer makes a declaration setting out particulars of the request and declaration made by the person and stating that:
(i) the declaration made by the person, so far as it relates to the matters specified in subparagraphs (2A)(b)(i) and (ii), does not contain a statement that, to the knowledge of the authorized officer, is untrue in a material particular; and
(ii) the authorized officer is satisfied that the declaration made by the person is true so far as it relates to the matter specified in subparagraph (2A)(b)(iii);
an authorized officer of the library or archives may make, or cause to be made, the reproduction to which the request relates and supply the reproduction to the person.
Note: The reproduction could be made from another reproduction of the article or published work in the collection of the library or archives that was made without infringing copyright because of subsection 51A(1), to replace the article or published work because it was damaged, had deteriorated or had been lost or stolen.
(3) Where a charge is made for making and supplying a reproduction to which a request under subsection (1) or (2A) relates, subsection (2) or (2C), as the case may be, does not apply in relation to the request if the amount of the charge exceeds the cost of making and supplying the reproduction.
(4) Subsection (2) or (2C) does not apply in relation to a request for a reproduction of, or parts of, 2 or more articles contained in the same periodical publication unless the articles are requested for the same research or course of study.
(5) Subsection (2) or (2C) does not apply to a request for a reproduction of the whole of a work (other than an article contained in a periodical publication), or to a reproduction of a part of such a work that contains more than a reasonable portion of the work unless:
(a) the work forms part of the library or archives collection; and
(b) before the reproduction is made, an authorized officer has, after reasonable investigation, made a declaration stating that he or she is satisfied that a reproduction (not being a second?hand reproduction) of the work cannot be obtained within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price.
(5AA) For the purposes of subsection (5), if the characteristics of the work are such that subsection 10(2) or (2A) is relevant to the question whether the reproduction contains only a reasonable portion of the work, then that question is to be determined solely by reference to subsection 10(2) or (2A) and not by reference to the ordinary meaning of reasonable portion.
(5AB) For the purposes of paragraph (5)(b), in determining whether a reproduction (not being a second?hand reproduction) of the work cannot be obtained within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price, the authorized officer must take into account:
(a) the time by which the person requesting the reproduction requires it; and
(b) the time within which a reproduction (not being a second?hand reproduction) of the work at an ordinary commercial price could be delivered to the person; and
(c) whether an electronic reproduction of the work can be obtained within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price.
(5A) If an article contained in a periodical publication, or a published work (other than an article contained in a periodical publication) is acquired, in electronic form, as part of a library or archives collection, the officer in charge of the library or archives may make it available online within the premises of the library or archives in such a manner that users cannot, by using any equipment supplied by the library or archives:
(a) make an electronic reproduction of the article or work; or
(b) communicate the article or work.
(6) The copyright in an article contained in a periodical publication is not infringed by the making, in relation to a request under subsection (1) or (2A), of a reproduction of the article, or of a part of the article, in accordance with subsection (2) or (2C), as the case may be, unless the reproduction is supplied to a person other than the person who made the request.
(7) The copyright in a published work other than an article contained in a periodical publication is not infringed by the making, in relation to a request under subsection (1) or (2A), of a reproduction of the work, or of a part of the work, in accordance with subsection (2) or (2C), as the case may be, unless the reproduction is supplied to a person other than the person who made the request.
(7A) Subsections (6) and (7) do not apply to the making under subsection (2) or (2C) of an electronic reproduction of:
(a) an article, or a part of an article, contained in a periodical publication; or
(b) the whole or part of a published work, other than such an article;
in relation to a request under this section for communication to the person who made the request unless:
(c) before or when the reproduction is communicated to the person, the person is notified in accordance with the regulations:
(i) that the reproduction has been made under this section and that the article or work might be subject to copyright protection under this Act; and
(ii) about such other matters (if any) as are prescribed; and
(d) as soon as practicable after the reproduction is communicated to the person, the reproduction made under subsection (2) or (2C) and held by the library or archives is destroyed.
(7B) It is not an infringement of copyright in an article contained in a periodical publication, or of copyright in a published work, to communicate it in accordance with subsection (2), (2C) or (5A).
(8) The regulations may exclude the application of subsection (6) or (7) in such cases as are specified in the regulations.
(9) In this section:
archives means an archives all or part of whose collection is accessible to members of the public.
library means a library all or part of whose collection is accessible to members of the public directly or through interlibrary loans.
supply includes supply by way of a communication.
Note: Under section 203F, it is an offence to make a false or misleading declaration for the purposes of this section. Sections 203A, 203D and 203G create offences relating to the keeping of declarations made for the purposes of this section.
I quite like the idea that any privilege extended to parliamentarians should automatically be extended to the population at large. That would simplify this particular bit of legislation!
Alternatively, copyright law had just become to much and can no longer be saved.
I meant to add, I’m glad that more serious people than I are looking at this kind of thing and hopefully coming up with a nice clean story about why it’s so bad so we can better argue and fight against it.
But until then I will just be a libertarian, suspicious of government action in every instance :(
Marvelous bit of regulation speak.
Restrictions of exclusive rights for the purposes of education, research, government and the like are covered by the 3 step test of the Berne convention. The 3 step test has been around for more than 3 decades. The excessive regulations quoted above look more like the workings of the Peter Principle than of copyright, it is very unlikely that scanning and use of documents in such a library would have impacts on authors economic rights outside that special need situation (though it might affect the academic publishing industries business model) .
There is an argument that in these days of algorithms that can accurately sort frequency of individual use (of digital publications) by the value of that digital page and the growing wide access to things like ‘itunes bookshops’ that the justification and need for public libraries is uncertain, the Uni of NSW recently threw out a vast amount of books and turned most of the library into a internet cafe.
How to adapt/interpret the three step test in the new world of the web is important to working out how to get the balance of public access to things like library books and the individual economic rights of creators that is mutually beneficial.
A new Max-Planck-Institute declaration on balancing the three step test :
link dropped of
?
http://www.ip.mpg.de/de/pub/aktuelles/declaration-threesteptest.cfm