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
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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