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Long-Term Management and Preservation of Publications on CD-ROMs and floppy Disks: Legal and Commercial Issues

Notes from a presentation by Annabelle Herd, Copyright Research Officer, Australian Council of Libraries & Information Services, at the the National Consultative Meeting on the Management of Australian Physical-Format Digital Publications National Library of Australia October 27-28 1997

Legal Deposit of Copyright Material: The Comprehensive Collection and Preservation of a Nation's Published Material

Introduction

  • Purpose of legal deposit provisions
  • Statutory recognition that there is value in comprehensively collecting the published material of a nation
  • Statutory provision as the guarantee of the completeness and the integrity of the national archive

What does the Copyright Act 1968 say?

  • An obligation on publishers to deliver one copy of any material published by them, and in which copyright subsists, to the National Library (s.201(1))
  • Items must be deposited within one month of publication (s.201(1))
  • Penalty for non-compliance: fine of $100 (s.201(1))

Relationship between copyright and legal deposit

  • Legal deposit provisions usually found in copyright legislation: the collection of works protected by copyright
  • Legal deposit is referred to in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Article 5(2))
  • Only incidentally concerned with copyright
  • Legal deposit provisions as independent provisions relating to library copying

Materials currently covered by s.201 of the Copyright Act

  • Only published material
  • Illustrations including drawings, engravings and photographs
  • 'Library material': books, periodicals, pamphlets, sheets of letter-press, sheets of music, maps, plans, charts or tables

Reform of current legal deposit provisions

It is not so much a 'reform' as a revised interpretation of 'library materials'

  • Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth)
Copyright Law Review Committee Report on Computer Software Protection (1995)
Joint Submission to the CLRC Review and Simplification of the Copyright Act 1968
Copyright owner responses
Legislative amendment
  • State Legislation
  • International Reform
Canada, Norway, USA, France
European Commission study: Deposit Collection of Electronic Publications

Further Information

  • ACLIS information on copyright
  • Legal Deposit in Australia
  • Copyright Law Review Committee

Or contact:

Annabelle Herd, Copyright Research Officer
Australian Council of Libraries & Information Services
E-mail: aherd@nla.gov.au
Telephone: +61 2 6262 1273
Facsimile: +61 2 6273 4493

Return to the National Consultative Meeting

Last updated 6 January 1998
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