Digital Preservation Coalition

Pre-Registration is now open 'Intellectual Property Rights and Digital Preservation', a briefing day sponsored jointly by the Digital Preservation Coalition and JISC Digital Media, in Bristol on 21 November 2011.

Digital preservation helps to deliver lasting impact from highly prized and valuable digital resources. This is often understood as a technical challenge but experience shows that a poor fit between technology, processes and regulations constrains preservation actions and significantly inhibit the benefits which long-term access ought to deliver. Operating within a complicated and evolving legal and regulatory landscape, the digital preservation community needs a clear understanding of what it is permitted to do and what risks might inhere within technical processes like format shifting, migration, bit replication and emulation. Foremost among these challenges is the management, protection and evolution of intellectual property rights. It has long been recognised that digital rights management and encryption present a barrier to preserving content. But intellectual property rights do not just impact on the contents of archives but applies also to the containers, wrappers and formats which make the contents accessible.

This briefing day, co-sponsored by the DPC and JISC Digital Media, is intended to examine and discuss key concepts of intellectual property rights as they impact on digital preservation. It will provide a forum to review and debate the latest developments in the law as it applies to preservation and it will initiate a discussion on how simple legal processes can be deployed. Based on commentary and case studies from leaders in the field, participants will be presented with emerging tools and technologies and will be encouraged to propose and debate the future for these developments. The day will include a discussion of:

• Intellectual property rights in format migration and emulation
• Intellectual property rights in information and product lifecycles
• Licensing preservation actions and digital rights management for the long term
• Emerging trends and tools for managing intellectual property in preservation

Who should come?

• Collections managers, curators and archivists in all institutions
• Tools developers and policy makers in digital preservation
• Innovators and researchers in information policy and management
• Innovators and researchers in computing science
• Vendors and providers of digital preservation services

How to register

Details of programme and venue are available online alongside pre-registration which is now open for DPC members, invited guests of JISC Digital Media and speakers at: http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/36-intellectual-property-rights-and-digital-preservation?xref=36 General registration will be open after 10th October at a cost of £250 pounds per person. Places are limited and will fill quickly, so early registration is recommended and cannot be guaranteed after the 10th October.