Those British librarians (that is to say, people from the British Library) yesterday threw their support behind a radical overhaul of UK copyright law, with the institution's CEO, Lynne Brindley remarking that: "Unless there is a serious updating of copyright law to recognize the changing technological environment, the law becomes an ass".
In terms of the changes they support, the British Library sit somewhere between the content industries, who want stronger and clearer laws governing piracy, and certain consumer rights and 'open source' groups who want legislation that controls the ways content owners restrict usage.
Though one of the key issues raised in a new manifesto, launched by the Library at that there Labour Party Conference yesterday, is concerned more with the latter. They say that some content owners are currently using digital rights management which makes it technically impossible for people, and libraries in particular, to exercise existing rights given by current copyright law. These include rights to make personal copies of copyright content (printed content that is, not recordings), and rights that exist to enable preservation, or the adaptation of content for use by disabled consumers.
Brindley: "DRM is a technical device, but it's being used in an all-embracing sense. It can't be circumvented for disabled access or preservation, and the technology doesn't expire (as traditional copyright does). In effect, it's overriding exceptions to copyright law".
Of course the British Library is not concerned exclusively with music copyrights, and many of the issues they raise in the manifesto (and, indeed, raised during the All Parliamentary Internet Group's recent investigation into DRM issues) are not so relevant to the recorded domain. However, one specific concern expressed in the manifesto does relate to the library's Sound Archive.
The Sound Archive holds about 75% of all music released in the UK, plus a stack of other sound and video recordings including plays, poetry, speeches, interviews, and wildlife sounds. A key role of the modern Sound Archive is copying recordings acquired in essentially now defunct formats onto current technologies, however the Library is only at liberty to do so once a recording is out of copyright - currently fifty years after release. As previously reported, the record industry is keen to extend that copyright period - to 95 years - but the British Library says that if the period was extended, and if current restrictions of making archive copies continued, by the time many older recordings came out of copyright the original recordings will have been lost to decay.
The manifesto says: "Currently the law does not permit copying of sound and film items for preservation. Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture. Many original audio and film formats we hold are becoming increasingly more fragile and face irretrievable decay [if not preserved soon]".
Of course that doesn't mean the Library is necessarily opposing the record industry's bid to extend their copyrights - a change in the restrictions to how and when the Library can make copies of recordings would also overcome the problem, but Library bosses do urge politicians to consider "sound economic evidence and the needs of all members of our economy and society" before making any moves to make copyrights longer or more restrictive.