Why libraries need limitations and exceptions

Abstract

Limitations on the exclusive rights granted to authors are essential to maintain a balance between the interests of established creators and new creators, and between copyright holders and the public. Balance in copyright is also crucial to ensuring that libraries can serve their essential functions of collecting, preserving, and making available diverse collections in support of the public interest. Digital technology presents libraries with opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, digital technology facilitates the making of preservation copies, the creation of new research tools like databases for text and data mining, and the transmission of copies to users. On the other hand, it often is unclear how an exception written for a pre-digital world applies to digital technology. An increasing number of countries are prohibiting the enforcement of contractual terms that purport to limit copyright exceptions. Whether libraries can continue to fulfill their missions in the digital era may depend in part on whether they continue to benefit from robust copyright limitations and exceptions. If the law fails to keep up with technology, libraries may find themselves unable to collect, lend, and preserve important cultural materials, and the market power of rightsholders will have grown to the point where copyright no longer serves the public interest from a utilitarian point of view and has become an impediment to the important competing rights claims of libraries and their users from a natural rights point of view.