The Netherlands: pioneer in digital preservation cultural heritage

The Library of Congress has recently issued a joint report on digital preservation and copyright. This authoritative report was compiled by the National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program, and in cooperation with partners in Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. SURFfoundation is responsible for the Dutch contribution.

The report, International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation, notes that digital works are ephemeral, and unless preservation efforts are begun soon after they are created, they will be lost to future generations. The report found that although copyright and related laws are not the only obstacle to digital preservation, there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.

Recommendations are provided for legislative reform and other solutions to ensure that libraries, archives and other preservation institutions can manage copyrighted digital information in a manner consistent with national and international laws.  Specific recommendations include structuring national copyright laws to provide exceptions for preservation institutions to proactively preserve at risk copyrighted material in digital form, subject to measures appropriate to protect the legitimate interests of right holders.

The Dutch contribution to the report takes inventory of current digital preservation efforts in the Netherlands. It also looks at the way in which the Netherlands regulates the preservation of and access to digital materials: through agreements between cultural institutions and entitled parties, which ensure that 20th-century works will remain publicly available. Higher education institutions in the Netherlands, collaborating within SURF, have indicated that they want clarity about preserving and providing access to cultural resources.

The recommendations for reforming Dutch legislation also focus on works from collections in museums, archives and libraries. These works need to be digitized for preservation. A secure network would have to ensure access to these digitized works.

For the Netherlands, the report is particularly important in view of the leading international position which the National Library of the Netherlands has achieved with its e-depository. The Library is often quoted as ‘an example of good practice’.

The importance of the report is underlined by Dr. Wim van Drimmelen, Director of the National Library. In an article in the Dutch newspaper ‘NRC Handelsblad’ of 17 April 2008, the National Library argued for removing the legal obstacles to digitizing 20th-century library collections. In addition, Van Drimmelen argues that clear regulation and legislation in this area is also of paramount importance for new, digitally born documents since their accessibility is under greater threat than that of traditional information carriers.

According to the report, copyright laws should permit preservation institutions to preserve copyrighted works in accordance with international best practices for digital preservation, including making copies for administrative and technical purposes; migrating works into different formats in response to technological developments and changing standards; and maintaining redundant copies among preservation institutions and legally authorized third party preservation repositories to protect against catastrophic loss.

The report further recommends that copyright exceptions for digital preservation should not be conditioned on the category (such as literature or music) or format (such as compact disc or website) of the work.

The Images for the Future project is mentioned at page 48.

Download the report ‘International Study on the Impact of Copyright law on Digital Preservation’

Source: www.surffoundation.nl

By this point in the conference, the afternoon of the third day, the challenges of the commons had been fairly well explored: Current copyright law thwarts free access and reusability; archives aren’t sure where to position themselves in the continuum between protecting their assets and promoting their collections; digital information can be copied and distributed so perfectly and cheaply that the value of the information is approaching zero… information wants to be free.

Which raises the question- if information is free, how do the people who manage and create information survive? Are we devaluing their efforts as well? Musicians seem to be navigating this tricky situation by using their digitally distributed music to promote their “in the flesh” touring schedule; visual artists can hope that people will come to see their work in person even if their images are splashed and appropriated all over the internet; educators and lecturers can perhaps be subsidized by universities, or can get more speaking gigs in order to make money. But what are filmmakers doing? What about authors? How does this potentially new audience of freeloaders help the creative person?

The timing of this segment on Professional Cultural Producers was very well planned, as it seemed necessary to hear from them about their abilities to navigate this tricky market. First to take the stage was Florian Schneider, a videomaker, essayist and cultural organizer, who overlaid his own theoretical talk of imaginary property with a video of a piece of physical artwork being carefully transported to a museum by a registrar. His talk focused on these issues of imaginary property, information flows, fears of representation and mis-representation, the fear of the illegitimate copy. In this discussion, he represented the theoretical side a practical issue, but I was looking for some practical case studies.

The next speaker was Bauke Freiberg, from FabChannel/Culture Player, who spoke about their product, which acts as a platform for concert videos from Paradiso and Melkweg, popular clubs in Amsterdam. Just as a museum might record registrations of its art shows, Paradiso started recording its concerts, and over time this grew into a sophisticated 6 camera system, which now records and streams concerts, with ads and corporate sponsoring. In this regard, they are tied into the traditional marketing model of wrapping content in sponsorship. They hold traditional contracts with the artists on their site, and everything seems to follow the normal copyright model. So, it is a concrete example, and a good-functioning one, of a sort of “corporate” solution, in terms of distribution or control of images.
So, from a very theoretical and open-source argument from Florian to a clean, corporate solution from Bauke, we arrived at the final speaker of the day: Kenneth Goldsmith, from Ubuweb in New York. He reinvigorated the audience by injecting humor and irreverence by declaring that he was not interested in creating community or having user feedback, that his site was not democratic, and was run only by a field of expert volunteers. Ubuweb never clears copyright on anything – his panel of volunteers mine and re-post artist text and video from a variety of sources, including members-only sources like karagarga. They have no ads and make no direct revenue from the site, and have a page http://www.ubu.com/resources/shame.html for people and organizations which have asked to be taken off the site.

Afterwards in the Q&A, with Rick Prelinger joining the stage, and moderated by Eric Kluitenberg, and audience member asked a simple yet difficult question – what can one tell an archive who wants to get started, who wants to enter this digital environment? The answers ranged from “Just get started.” to “ I really don’t have any advice for you.” It may not have been the brightest note for the ending of the conference, but certainly reflects the dilemmas and confusion facing archives and creators as we come up against the new economy of the commons.

In the opening keynote for ‘Economies of the Commons’, Peter Kaufman put forth one of the main concerns which will be addressed throughout the congress. In a highly digitalized information society, copyright is in some ways much more a burden and much less a safeguard, especially regarding the dispersal of cultural heritage, public knowledge and content. And so we should reconsider the current state of copyright.

Films, television programs, music and all other sorts of media content are made rapidly available through peer-to-peer networks. According to studies, music distributed through iTunes can be downloaded for free (although illegally) in an average of 8 minutes after its release, Kaufman said. In this age content becomes available for anyone, at any time, an in the immediate future at any place, as media carriers keep expanding the possibilities and storage capacity.

The consumer evolves into a producer and distributor. He distributes existing content, but he can also use digital content to recreate new content and thus also create culture. Rather than trying to stop this phenomenon by applying copyright acts, Kaufman suggested that we should embrace these possibilities and use them to our advantage when disclosing culture heritage and public knowledge.

This is already happening by initiatives in both public and private sectors. Several institutions in the public sector outside of America give way to start thinking about collaboration and the creation of platforms which help to distribute content through the proper, accessible channels. Even within America, and indeed throughout the world, private initiatives have made it clear which type of models could be used to distribute this kind of content.

After the keynote some interesting points were raised in a brief Q & A session. Topics of these questions were among others the scarcity of media in the pending future, the role of traditional, local media and the zoning of online media content. These questions could not yet be fully answered, as some were food for future thought while others would be most likely addressed at other panels throughout the congress.

Copyright used to be a very specialized field of law, but over the last few years, it has become a highly political topic, where discussions routinely tend to include issues such as freedom of information, human rights of access to knowledge, democracy etc.. These lively discussions take place in every thinkable media forms.  Images for the Future follows these discussions closely. Below are some pointers to recent contributions made by those representing the ‘open access’ movement. Please share your favourite blogposts, books etc. as comments.

To start, Cory Doctorow (blogger, journalist and science fiction author) writs in his latest contribution to The Guardian titled ‘Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses’ about how IPR regulations are making it practically impossible for end-users to reuse copyrighted material. He writes how ”…individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it’s not’s really culture if you’re not sharing it, is it?).” With the internet, it became not only easier to share whatever creation in digital form, for enforcers it became easier to track down possible infringers. Doctorow poses how “We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in copyright, such as fair dealing and fair use. Instead we need to establish a new copyright regime that reflects the age-old normative consensus about what’s fair and what isn’t at the small-scale, hand-to-hand end of copying, display, performance and adaptation.”

For Joost Smiers (professor of political science of the arts at the Utrecht School of the Arts) this wouldn’t be a probable strategy. In his article “What if we would not have copyright” he states “…it is unthinkable to bring the current system back to normal proportions because it is not in the interest of the main proponents of the system – the cultural conglomerates- to assist in this transformation”. His paper presents a radically different (but in my view not totally convincing) economic model for creative sector. Smiers believes any artistic creation belongs in the public domain and thus proposes to abolish the whole concept of copyright. Whatever you make of his quite radical, albeit thought provoking vision, Smiers ends his paper with a conclusion that is widely shared “One must be blind not to observe that copyright is in it’s final days. Even massive criminalisation of users of artistic materials does not work any longer”. The artice was published in the MyCreativity Reader and can be obtained for free through the Institute of Network Cultures.

Copyright used to be a very specialized field of law, but over the last few years, it has become a highly political topic, where discussions routinely tend to include issues such as freedom of information, human rights of access to knowledge, democracy etc.. These lively discussions take place in every thinkable media forms.

This premise is the starting point of the documentary Steal This Film II, released a few weeks ago. Through interviews with Yochai Benkler, Brewster Kahle, Rick Prelinger, Laurence Liang and many other influential thinkers, Steal This Film brilliantly explores current changes in the way media is produced, distributed and consumed. It traces back the roots of piracy to the invention of the printing press in the 15^th century and continues makes the case how file sharing is the fundamental structure of the internet. For copyright holders, this results in serious headaches. As Aaron Swarts, co-founder of the social news website Reddit.com states: “there’s no one you can go to and say: stop the file sharing – it’s just not built that way” If you haven’t downloaded the documentary yet, you can do so online: at Steal This Film II.

The new attitude towards the production of media was at the heart of the Video Vortex conference, that took place on 18-19 December. Speakers like Jay Dedman and Valentin Spirik took the stage to demonstrate how easy it is to produce and distribute online video, giving dozens of examples. Many of these can be found on the Yahoo Videoblogging group webpages.

The Do It Yourself (DIY) model is also applicable in the music industry. In the January edition of Wired Magazine, David Byrne offers different models that are currently shaping the music industry; more precisely the relationship between artists and record companies. Byrne writes: “Where there was one, now there are six: Six possible music distribution models, ranging from one on which the artist is pretty much hands-off to one where the artist does nearly everything.” On one end of the scale is the equity deal, where artists hand over virtually every aspect of their carrier; the artist becomes a brand. Madonna made this kind of deal some months ago with Live Nation. On the far end of the scale sits the self-distribution model, where music is self written, self produced and self distributed. Radiohead adopted this DIY model for the much publicised release of their latest album, ‘In Rainbows’.

In the Netherlands, a parliamentary working group will study the impact the rise internet is having on copyright. This working group, announced mid January, will investigate scenario’s how to compensate rights owners for mass downloading in illegal ways.

As Images for the Future continues to develop innovative services, such as the Plaform Open Licences, these views are helping to define a strategic agenda on this topic. The question how to create sustainable access to archive holdings – and the legal aspects regarding reuse are also going to be discussed during the Economies of the Commons conference (10-12 April 2008) co-hosted by De Balie and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.