Section 108 Report Released
After three years of hearings, studies and deliberation, the Section 108 Study Group has posted its final report on how to bring the special provision of the U.S. Copyright Act regarding libraries and archives into the digital age. The results reflect the difficulty of balancing the interests of copyright holders, libraries and archives.
The Study Group recommended a number of legislative changes to Section 108 to facilitate preservation and archiving of published and unpublished material, unrestricted online content and television news programs. The report also reviewed many issues on which the members—often divided between the interests of rights holders and librarians—could not reach full agreement.
There were no major bombshells in the report. Interestingly, the Study Group identified, but refrained from proposing recommendations on, a number of significant copyright issues worthy of further study and consideration. These included the use of movies and other non-text-based materials in the library context, technology circumvention and e-reserves.
Nineteen copyright experts served on the Section 108 Study Group, which was co-chaired by UNC School of Law Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Laura Gasaway and Richard Rudick, retired Senior Vice President and General Counsel of John Wiley and Sons (and Vice Chairman of Copyright Clearance Center’s Board of Directors). The Study Group’s report may be used by the Copyright Office to draft legislative recommendations to Congress.
The group’s years of effort and the resulting report illustrate just how challenging it is to find consensus on copyright issues and, ultimately, how daunting the task of writing copyright legislation can be. Yet the pace of technological and social change around the topic has led to calls in some quarters to consider a revising of the 1976 Act for a new generation (just as the 1976 Act replaced the 1909 Act). Whether it will come to that in the near term is doubtful, but the pressures being created in the digital environment are equally hard to ignore.
