How does the Publishing Community look upon the legal deposit of digital files of

copyrighted works, or implicitly, the distribution of copyrighted publisher files for

other purposes e.g. accessible copies?
From real-time transcript WIPO SCCR28 (with some editing) Friday AM(4 JULY
2014) Webcast at 02 hr 18 min, IPA Secretary General, International Publishers
Association (IPA)
http://www.wipo.int/webcasting/en/
>> IPA: Mr. Chairman, please allow me to briefly summarize the very constructive
discussions that are going on and have been going on over the years between
libraries and publishers on the issue of legal deposit, that will explain to you why
our position is that we should not discuss legal deposits as a separate issue but all
copyright aspects are actually subsumed under the other discussion issues,
remote access, reproduction, et cetera.
From a publisher perspective, legal deposit is not a copyright issue initially,
because the core issue is making sure that publishers give their works to libraries
in the first place. That's not an act restricted by copyright. That is an obligation,
either under law or it is under a voluntary system. And discussions and
explorations with libraries and publishers have shown that compliance, whether
you have a high compliance rate, which all desire or whether you have a low
compliance rate does not depend on whether a legal deposit systemit was
statutory or voluntary but it depends on the trust of the rights holders in the
system that it works, that the works are being looked after, and that it, indeed,
serves the preservation of this heritage. In the digital environment, the legal
deposit has new challenges and these challenges are what are going to determine
whether a legal deposit system, whether statutory or voluntary is going to be
successful.
Among these criteria are IT security: because nobody is going to give a digital file,
which is not well protected to a library if he himself has a very strong need for
security. The operational issues: how easy is it to make legal deposit? The
curational issues: is the library actually in a position? Is it capable? Is it funded to
actually ensure the long-term preservation? And is it able to deal with all the new
kind of digital products that publishers are creating, online databases, customary
publishing, self-publishing, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the aspects of whether
publishers trust and will collaborate with a legal deposit system is actually the
copyright regime under which these copies, in particular, the digital copies are
being held.
So if I give my legal -- my digital copies, who will have access? Will it be safe --
held safely? Will this legal deposit copy compete with my commercial product? If
it does, we destroy the kind of trust and the need to collaborate and the will to
collaborate because suddenly, there's a real and heavy commercial burden on
this.
Many areas where this collaboration is currently functioning now deal with the
kind of embargo, so that this work is deposited, but it actually remains under a
very restricted access policy for a time that is set by the publisher. So this is the
other where copyright law comes in. Two wide exceptions, heard compliance, two
narrow exceptions do not give the libraries what they actually need in terms of
uses that they have and they are doing in the public interest.
This balance is hard to achieve, but all of these access issues, whether it's taking a
legal deposit copy, and allowing remote access, taking a legal deposit copy and
allowing document delivery. Taking a legal deposit copy and providing it for
education or copying it for preservation, all of these issues are secondary and are
the copyright issues, the area where copy right actually intersects with legal
deposit.
I do not believe, therefore, that legal deposit should be a separate issue here. All
of these uses are actually covered by other topics we are raising, however, as we
discussed them, we should bear in mind that a too lax copyright law will actually
harm copyright compliance