[pd-discuss] Hathitrust locks public domain books; amasses scans from others, and gives full access only to partners members

Thu Jun 23 21:54:13 UTC 2011

As per the below:

If you want your institution's holdings digitized more rapidly,
without such obligations, though donations are accecpted, your
interests might be served by contacting someone at:

http://www.archive.org

If you don't get a reply in a few weeks, resend, and include a
cc: hart at pglaf.org
and I will attend to getting you a more speedy reply.

Michael

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011, Peter B. Hirtle wrote:

>
> There is no question that having completely open public domain materials is the most
> desirable outcome.  That is one of the reasons why my institution has adopted a policy
> that allows free use of any public domain material that we may own.  Users are only
> charged if staff have to do something (such as digitize a work, or get a different file
> copy from digital storage).  Our policy is based in part of American law, which
> stipulates that slavish reproductions do not have a copyright in-and-of themselves. 
> Other jurisdictions, I believe, to provide protection for the act of
> digitization/reproduction itself. 
>
>  
>
> We have only been able to digitize a miniscule a small portion of our holdings in the
> 20+ years that we have been involved with digitization.  One of our corporate partners
> can digitize in 6 months as much as we did over that entire period.  Yet there need to
> be clear policy obligations guiding the development of these contracts, as Javier
> suggests.  That is why the Association of Research Libraries developed a set of
> principles to govern the agreements with digitization vendors: see
> http://www.arl.org/news/pr/principles-4august10.shtml.  They stipulate that agreements
> should not be exclusive and that the public domain material eventually become free of
> all restrictions after a limited period of time.
>
>  
>
> Google fares pretty well under the guidelines – except for the last point.  It is, for
> example, contractually obligated to provide free access to all digitized public domain
> works.  How I wish the other BL publishing arrangements had such a requirement, or that
> we knew that at a certain point the BL scans would be made freely available!
>
>  
>
> Javier asked about the 15 year limit on restrictions on Google scans.  I first saw this
> in Virginia’s amended contract: seehttp://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2010/03/virginia-makes-the-google-settlement-bett
> er-for-libraries.html.  I would have anticipated that Google would have amended the
> contracts of its other partners to mirror the terms in the Virginia contract.  However,
> with the failure of the settlement in the lawsuit against Google, the issue is now moot
> since the Virginia amendment is no longer valid (as per clause 8.4), and Google once
> again owns its scans into perpetuity. 
>
>  
>
> Peter
>
>  
>
> From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On
> Behalf Of Javier Ruiz
> Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 8:56 AM
> To: Michael S. Hart; Public Domain discuss list
> Cc: andrewrturvey; Roger Bamkin
> Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] Hathitrust locks public domain books; amasses scans from
> others, and gives full access only to partners members
>
>  
>
> I think the issue here is not so much copyright but the mission of organisations that
> have some public interest and the interaction with business models. Just because
> something is in the public domain nobody has an obligation to spend money in bandwidth
> and storage to publish it, but if you are a public institution then you have to consider
> open access when you do.
>
>  
>
> The case of the Hathi trust brings the question of whether private institutions that
> take on a public interest mission should be bounded by some of the constrains that we
> would expect on public bodies. The Anglo-Saxon world is clearly moving towards a
> situation where support for public culture is increasingly not seen as a core duty of
> the State, but that of philanthropists and corporate sponsors. Public institutions are
> expected to generate private income, and private institutions take on public missions.
>
>  
>
> From what people are reporting in this list, Peter seems right to point to the British
> Library as a much more problematic case than the Hathi Trust, with PPP deals that lock
> away digital works behind paywalls. Also, I would agree with Dingodog that saying that
> you can go and scan again is not viable. That is the fig leaf of many digitisation
> deals, but when you look at the study of costs involved in digitising all of EU culture
> by Nick Poole at Collections Trust, it becomes clear that EVERY (;-) digitisation effort
> has to be assumed to be a one off with a long term strategy for open access.
>
>  
>
> Here it may be useful to start with some norms  -- or an "open definition" for digital
> GLAMs -- as Jonathan proposed, although for us as an advocacy organisation these bottom
> up norms should be complemented with something we can propose as policy (top down). The
> more these norms are used in practice the easier it is to push for the policy with
> examples.
>
>  
>
> Having a policy besides a best practice manual or a definition is necessary for larger
> institutions. We have been told very clearly by people at the British Library that they
> do not have a coherent policy direction for digital other than in preservation. In the
> absence of policy via governors, managers just see digital as potential income, and
> favour dodgy PPP deals at least as avoiding upfront expenses, even if it means
> restrictions. 
>
>  
>
> Many business models for digitisation (freemium, temporary paywalls, sponsorship, etc.)
> could be acceptable but they need to be shaped by clear policy obligations. These can
> range from avoiding sponsorship by companies with bad human rights records to ensure
> that exclusive deals will be based on cost recovery.
>
>  
>
> Making this happen, I am afraid, is going to take more than encouragement. I think the
> video is an excellent idea, but a multiple approach of positive encouragement,
> reputation embarrassment and outright political work is what works for change
> everywhere.
>
>  
>
> BL just announced a deal with Google for 250,000 books, which although better than
> Cengage or Brightsolid in terms of access is still problematic in that we don't know
> when the restrictions on the copies given to BL expire. We are chasing BL on this right
> now, but they say that Google signs generic deals and refuses to negotiate. 
>
>  
>
> We would be very interested to know more about the 15 years expiration of Google deals
> in US and whether this applies to UK. I have checked the amendments to the University of
> Michigan/ Google contract but didn't spot that. A recent EU report recommends a maximum
> of 7 years for PPP deals, but in UK most deals are 10 years. 
>
>  
>
> Javier
>
>  
>
> On 21 June 2011 11:23, Michael S. Hart <hart at pglaf.org> wrote:
>
>
> I'm not sure you CAN LEGALLY claim copyright in public domain matter,
> perhaps depending on what country you are in AND value added. . . .
>
>
> Michael S. Hart
> Founder
> Project Gutenberg,
> Inventor of eBooks
> Co-Founder
> The World eBook Fair
>
> 6.55 MILLION FREE eBOOKS!
> July 4 through August 4 @
> http://worldebookfair.org
> [Not Subtracting Duplicates]
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Matthew Mundell wrote:
>
> > This does, however, highlight the beauty of the public domain: anyone can
> > do anything with the work.
> >
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> >
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>  
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