ALIA copyright service: the digital agenda

Inquiry into the Digital Agenda Bill - a draft letter for librarians

ALCC consultant Jamie Wojetzki has prepared a draft letter to assist those who wish to lobby members of parliament on the Digital Agenda Bill.

Dear [insert your local member of parliament's name and address here]

I am writing to express deep concern about the proposal in the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill 1999 to exclude private-sector libraries from library provisions of the Copyright Act.

Although I support the broader objectives of the Bill, I am strongly opposed to the proposed exclusion of private sector libraries for a number of reasons.

Private sector libraries are a vital part of the co-operative national inter-library system through which increasingly specialised information resources are shared. Ready access to the full range of these resources is essential for Australia's research community, in the private and public sectors.

The Copyright Act currently permits all libraries to participate in this valuable system on a simple, non-discriminatory basis. This ensures an efficient flow of research information between the public and private sectors.

Amending the Copyright Act to exclude private-sector libraries will have a number of negative consequences:

1. The inter-library system will be split in two, increasing the administrative costs of Australian libraries.
   
   
2. Copyright fees paid by Australian libraries will rise, adding to the cost of doing research in this country.
   
   
3. Public, university, state, national and parliamentary libraries will no longer be able to request documents under section 50 from private-sector libraries, denying the users of those libraries access to various specialised private library collections. Similarly, private-sector libraries will lose access to the collections of public-sector libraries.
   
   
4. Libraries supporting co-operative private/public-sector research projects will be faced with far more complicated, and possibly unworkable, copyright compliance obligations.
   
   
5. The only possible alternative for private-sector libraries would be to obtain a collective licence from the Copyright Agency Limited, which does not guarantee blanket coverage of all copyright owners, particularly not for electronic copying. This would leave most businesses with two options: cut back access to information, or breach copyright. Neither of these options is acceptable.

For these reasons, I strongly urge a reconsideration of the proposal to exclude private-sector libraries from the definition of 'library' under the Act. This issue should be deferred for consideration in the context of the Copyright Law Review Committee's Simplification Report (which makes specific recommendations on this issue that differ from the approach proposed in the Bill).

Yours sincerely