How Copyright Hinders The Preservation Of Modern, Digital Culture
from the killing-culture-with-copyright dept
A recent Guardian interview with the British Library’s head of digital publications, Giulia Carla Rossi, reveals the problems caused by copyright for those tasked with preserving modern culture. In some respects, the British Library finds itself in a fortunate position, as Rossi explains:
Because we collect under non-print legal deposit [the regulation that grants the British Library a copy of every work published in the UK], the idea is we collect everything that is published.
However, there is a fundamental difference between collecting analogue publications such as books, and those that are born digital. Where the former can be appreciated directly, the latter require a platform of some kind. That might be an operating system, a browser plug in, or specific hardware such as a game console. Rossi warns:
It’s easy to take for granted the technology we have access to right now. Apps and tablets are still very much alive and happening, and people might not realise how fragile some of these formats are, because they are reliant on bespoke software. It’s hard to think far in the future and realise that the kind of technology, and even the way we read, might be very different in a few years’ time.
In practice, that means that as platforms become obsolete and are phased out, they can take with them the digital artefacts that depend on those platforms to be accessed. Technical solutions exist that can help deal with these issues. For example, code stored on old physical formats can be transferred to new ones, and software emulators can help keep digital artefacts alive that might otherwise be impossible to access. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that there’s a big problem in the form of copyright law. Generally speaking, technical solutions can only be applied with the permission of the copyright holders. If the latter can’t be found – hard enough with physical books, often impossible for complex pieces of outdated software – these characteristic digital creations may be doomed to disappear. The severity of punishments for copyright infringement are so disproportionate, that researchers and curators are understandably unwilling to risk being taken to court for their preservation work – good intentions are no defense. Moreover, it’s a threat that continues to hang over cultural institutions for decades as a result of copyright’s absurdly long term.
Even when copyright protection on a piece of software or game finally expires after a century or more of being locked away, there is a high probability that they will remain inaccessible. The media on which they are stored may have degraded, or there may be no hardware available on which to run them or to aid programmers in creating emulators.
As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) noted with other examples, the problems faced globally by cultural institutions when preserving born-digital cultural artefacts underline the profound mis-match between copyright and the modern world.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon. Originally published to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: archives, british library, copyright, digital preservation, history, libraries
Comments on “How Copyright Hinders The Preservation Of Modern, Digital Culture”
The solution might be the self sacrifice of a preservationist going to jail to preserve whatever historical or cultural artifact they can find. Best that they can find a museum or a library to save the work before it’s lost forever
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Unfortunately, unless they release their work to the pirates, what they achieved will be destroyed when the lose the case, so such a sacrifice will be in vain.
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Their work would not have been in vain, but they wouldn’t be free to see the actual preservation, until their sentences are finished and their debt to society is paid in full. With plea bargaining and a judge and jury that would indeed why they did what they did, they might get a reduction in the time spent behind bars- or maybe an acquittal.
Of course, by passing on that intel with a message that they did this at risk to themselves, it would inspire others who are innocent to finish the job they started
The vast majority of arcade games would probably be digital dust were it not for the efforts of ROM dumpers to preserve those games, even if their efforts were (and still are) illegal. Preservation of digital media in the modern era practically requires piracy to pull off because copyright is such a tangled and thorny mess of laws and regulations and such that few people actually have the right to preserve digital media that isn’t theirs.
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It would take a willingness to lose one’s innocence to preserve these things, so using pirated media is just appreciation of the terrible sacrifice that they made. We can’t all be guilty for something that was saved by a “thief”
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Which is not only true but ultimately ironic considering all the copy protection that harmed actual paying customers of arcade games back in the day that have since gone to piracy routes to rerelease games in current times. Often using Mame itself or actually illegal methods of stealing open source software outside the licenses and developers.
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Thanks for the response. And if infringement is theft, that would mean the punishment of one theft makes it possible for other innocent people to follow up on what the thief has accomplished, with only the original thief being charged. It shouldn’t take one man’s generosity and willingness to suffer for us to preserve our culture
The copyright maximalists do do not want cultural works preserved, they want them to be ephemeral so that they can sell more new works.
Re: almost
They want you to forget They existed, so they can do it again and again.
How many remakes of Books, with Small changes to make them, THEIR OWN, are there??
To some, its as simple as changing the Actors. As in Classical music. the Orchestra and the Conductor and the location. Makes it NEW?
To many solutions
Program updates, GAME changed, is the old and New both valed?(sp) How many changes until its NOT?
Versions? 1.2..5 Are they revisits to the Original or Continuations?
Then we get, CES Version, CBM version, Atari Version, Windows version, Apple version and ALL the versions made. Do they need NEW CR/?? for EACH and every one?
And if you want LOTS of fun, there are CR for formats. Go ask ADOBE and all those FONTS. Ask MS about the CR for all the formats OFFICE can READ AND SAVE TO. They Either Bought the Rights of bought the company.
Beyond a Hardware and Software Collection of EACH group and product line. (the Commodore 64 had 2000+ games) The hardware wouldnt be to hard, but you are contending with TO MANY Rights. And WHEN you can bypass them.
The Rights to many authors, are in Limbo its Stupid. Conan Doyle is 1/2 released, Even Lovecraft. AND now days, unlike the past, The artwork is considered ITS OWN RIGHTS.
Re: forgot to mention
The USE of Dongles. Shoot the SOB that ever created this idea to protect Software and hardware.
Because if you use the Basic idea of it. PNP is a Dongle. When you plug a device into windows, This device Only wants Certain software and Can and will not USE other software that it is programmed NOT to.
Like Every USB Camera. Should NOT need a Company Program to run. Printers and even Some USB flash memory cards.
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That is a ‘feature’ of window, as most cameras work fine in Linux, without installing company provided drivers.
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Except when some critical functionality is buried in a special chip for which no specifications are available, as the without the original hardware it may be impossible to figure out what the special chip is doing.Being able to see the input, and how the output is read does is insufficient to work out what the chip is doing, for that you need the actual output.
Re: Re: cORRECT
aND THE FOUND THE HIDDEN ON IN THE CONSOLE, IN THE DVD drive. Why it took 10 yers to find it.
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My fingers hate dictation.
“And they found the hidden one in the console, in the DVD drive, Why it took 10 years to find it.”
Glyn’s article implies that the copyright issue was highlighted by the interviewee, Giulia Carla Rossi, in the Guardian article, and that this was viewed as an impediment to the work of the British Library. Not so. The issue of copyright was not mentioned. And for a simple reason. Under UK copyright law it is permissible to copy and decompile software for the purpose of making other software which can oerate with it, such as emulators – see section 50B of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended. Furthermore section 50C specifically allows a program to be modified in certain circumstances: “(2) It may, in particular, be necessary for the lawful use of a computer program to copy it or adapt it for the purpose of correcting errors in it.”
And these two provisions cannot be negated by terms in the software EULA – see section 296A.