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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 47| October 2000
Impressions
of IFLA:
copyright debated in Jerusalem
IFLA 2000 was my first time at an IFLA conference and my first visit to Israel. Being a copyright lawyer and a non-librarian, I was afraid that I might find myself with little to do at times but attend seminars on the intricacies of cataloguing books about medieval farming practices. But copyright is everywhere these days it seems and I was kept well occupied with such matters as consortial models of digital licensing, Eastern European copyright laws and an in-depth report on the World Trade Organisations Battle of Seattle last year by a librarian who attended as a delegate.
I learnt a great dealfrom the global (the potentially far-reaching implications of the WTOs General Agreement on Trade in Services for libraries) to the rather more local (did you know that poor Slovak librarians need copyright permission even to lend a book?).
I was also there in my capacity as a member of IFLAs Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM) which had two business meetings in Jerusalem. This is really the best forum that librarians around the world have to get together to share information about copyright and plan future lobbying. The committee signed off on a new IFLA position paper on copyright and a new set of principles to guide licensing agreements for electronic materials.
CLM also organised a forum at which I delivered a paper. The theme of the forum was barriers to freedom of access to information. It was quite well attended considering it was one of seven parallel sessions. Of course I talked about copyrighthow intellectual property protection has historically only ever increased and how digital copyright laws represent a quantum leap forward (or backwards) in the control of information. The other speakers spoke about the role that censorship and new technologies play in limiting access to knowledge. A lively discussion ensued about some of the implications of the new online world for libraries and their users.
I got to see another side of things briefly when I visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. This tour was organised privately by an IFLA delegate. We had to take our badges off and hold our official IFLA bags so that the labels could not be seen. Seven thousand people live in half a square kilometre at the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. I was immediately struck by the solidity of the clumsy brick buildings at the camp (I was expecting tents) but the camp has been there for over 50 years now.
We were given a tour of the Dheishehs small but significant cultural centre by one of its Directors, Khaled Saifi. He was born in the camp but expressed his hope that he and his children would not also die in the camp. The centre contains a number of books in English and Arabic (mostly cast-offs from other libraries) and, amazingly, a computer lab where the children were playing games, exchanging emails and even building a web site, possibly a world first for a refugee camp.
Back in the comfort of Canberra, I tried to access their site but it was apparently down. I later learned that someone had broken in and torched their computer room. The people of the Dheisheh camp should be so lucky as to have copyright as a barrier to the access of information. In their present position, the abstractions of intellectual property dont even register.
It was a sobering end to a fascinating journey which proved to me the
ever-present need for the services that libraries provide.
Nick Smith
Copyright Advisor, Australian Libraries Copyright Committee
The Librarys Copyright Advisor, Nick Smith in Jerusalem
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au