Digital Preservation Coalition

DPC Response to Review of Exceptions

The DPC has published its response to the recent Intellectual Property Office consultation on exceptions to copyright law with a detailed discussion of how these proposals impact on digital preservation. 

In summary, the DPC warmly welcomes the proposal to permit multiple copies to be created for preservation purposes. It notes and welcomes the proposal to broaden the types of content that can qualify for this exception and welcomes the proposal that extends this exception to a wider range of institutions.

The DPC seeks a number of clarifications to ensure that perfectly reasonable preservation actions are not inadvertently inhibited. For example the Coalition want to ensure that institutions are not prevented from collaborative preservation and is concerned that attempting to restrict preservation copying to an institution’s permanent collection may interfere with perfectly laudable and reasonable rescue and appraisal efforts.

The original consultation is online here from the Intellectual Property Office.

See the full text of our response here. [PDF 430KB]