Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
If one is preserving “in-house” all the pictures one has taken since one first
bought a digital camera, then one will have no problem. But if one needs to curate of
some artistic, cultural or scientific material that was not produced by oneself, then
the Law imposes limitations on the use, distribution and any kind of exploitation of
that material.
One might think “
Fine, I know already what I'm allowed to do! Why should I
further care about rights
?” The reason is that things will change: new Laws will
come into force, the Copyright will at a given time expire or the heirs of the original
right holder could give up the exploitation rights and put the work one is preserving
into the Public Domain. All these things have an impact on what anybody is allowed
to do.
And is there anything else to care of, except Copyright? Yes, there is Protection
of Minors, Right to Privacy, Trademarks, Patents, etc., and they all share the same
aim: they protect people from potential damages due to incorrect use of the material
being held! One should be aware of that.
The main questions one has to ask oneself are:
•
do the activities related to digital preservation violate any of the above rights?
•
are there some limits in copying,
transforming and distributing the digital
holdings?
•
is the object of preservation some personal material or is it intended for a wider
public?
Future consumers will have to respect to the same limitations, and they should also
be informed about the special permissions that the Laws grant them or that the
rights holder was willing to grant. In other words access conditions depend both on
legislation and on conditions defined within licenses and both must be preserved
over time and be kept updated.
10.6.1 Limitations and Rights to Perform Digital Preservation
Preserving a digital work in the long-term requires that a number of actions are
undertaken, including copying, reproducing, making available and transforming its
binary representation.
These actions might infringe existing Copyright: for instance, if one wanted to
transform a digital object from an obsolete format to a most recent one, and so
would risk altering the original creation in a way that the rights holder might not
agree with.
To ascertain that no such exclusive rights are violated, a preservation institution
has the following main options (which are all, within the conditions defined, in line
with the OAIS mandatory responsibilities):
•
to become the owner of the digital material and to obtain the exclusive rights
from the creators (excluded the non-transferrable moral rights);
