[Facil] [Rescape-l] (Rapport) La British Academy s'inquiete du durcissement du copyright

Valerie Dagrain vdagrain at free.fr
Mar 26 Sep 07:14:46 EDT 2006


http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/release.asp?Newsid=219

Copyright hindering scholarship in the humanities and social sciences
Date: 18 September 2006

A report from the British Academy, launched on 18 September, expresses
fears that the copyright system may in important respects be impeding,
rather than stimulating, the production of new ideas and new scholarship
in the humanities and social sciences.,,It is in the nature of creative
activity and scholarship that original material builds on what has gone
before – ‘if I have seen further, it is because I had stood on the
shoulders of giants’ – therefore provisions that are overly protective
of the rights of existing ideas may inhibit the development of new
ones.,,Existing UK law provides exemption from copyright for fair
dealing with material for purposes of private study and non-commercial
research, and for criticism and review. “There is, however, little
clarity about the precise scope of these exemptions, and an absence of
case law” said John Kay, who is Chair of the Working Group which oversaw
the Review. “Publishers are risk-averse, and themselves defensive of
existing copyrights.”,,The situation is aggravated by the increasingly
aggressive defence of copyright by commercial rights holders, and the
growing role – most of all in music – of media businesses with no
interest in or understanding of the needs of scholarship. It is also
aggravated by the unsatisfactory EU Database Directive, which is at once
vague and wide-ranging, and by the development of digital rights
management systems, which may enable publishers to use technology to
circumvent the exceptions to copyright which are contained in current
legislation.,,The Academy publishes with the report a draft set of
guidelines for Fellows and scholars on their rights and duties under
copyright legislation. They include,, * authors and producers of
original creative material should understand that their interests in
copyright are not necessarily identical with those of publishers and
should not rely on publishers to protect them, * the law should be
clarified - statutorily if necessary – to make clear that the use of
copyright material in the normal course of scholarly research in
universities and other public research institutions is covered by the
exemptions from the copyright act., * publishers should not be able to
use legal or technological protection through digital rights management
systems to circumvent copyright exemptions, * the growth of digital
databases should be monitored to ensure that ready access continues to
be available for the purposes of scholarship,,This report parallels a
report from the Royal Society, Keeping science open: the effects of
intellectual property on the conduct of science (2003), which expresses
related worries about the ways in which intellectual property, its
interpretation and its use, impact on the progress of science.






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