Proposal for a Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society
COM(97)628

http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg15/en/intprop/intprop/1100.htm

Response from The Library Association

III. MAIN CONCERNS IN THE PROPOSED EU COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE

1. The proposed Directive would not allow Member States to provide for any exceptions for libraries other than those explicitly listed in the text of the Directive (recital 22).
2. The proposed Directive would leave all exceptions that are listed except for one (Article 5.1.) purely as options to the Member States (recital 24). Therefore they would not only be entirely unharmonised but also without any guarantee that they will be implemented to preserve a fair balance in copyright.
3. The proposed Directive considers that "display on a screen" is part of a communication to the public. The proposed Directive does not provide for any exceptions under the communication to the public right for libraries. That means that libraries could not enable users to view electronic material without a special licence if this is done for private study or educational use, not even on-site in the library. Simple private viewing of digital information in a library would need the authorisation of the rights holder
4. The proposed Directive would unnecessarily restrict all exceptions by its proposed wording:

    

   • "establishments accessible to the public" (Article 5.2 (c)) which is likely to include public and national libraries but at the same time exclude academic, research, school or special libraries e.g. health libraries, libraries in Government, libraries in the voluntary sector, etc., which are equally deserving;
   • "use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research" (Article 5.3 (a)) which excludes other educational purposes and other non-scientific research;
   • "for uses for the benefit of visually-impaired or hearing-impaired persons" (Article 5.3(b)) which excludes people with other disabilities like learning or other physical problems.
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5. The Commission has suggested re-examination of the position on private copying in the digital environment (recital 26) which could lead to a complete removal of all private digital copying.
6. In the proposed Directive provisions are included for the legal protection of anti-copying and rights management systems (Article 6). There is concern among the library, information and archives community about the impact of electronic copyright management systems on the viability of the exceptions under copyright and related rights. The circumvention of technical measures should be allowed for activities authorised by the copyright owners or permitted by law, as should the production and marketing of devices designed to circumvent technical measures to facilitate the making of non-infringing copies. Furthermore the privacy of citizens should be safeguarded.

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