On Thursday, 2 July 2015, the United States of America presented the following intervention on preservation in the context of copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. The following statement was captured by the WIPO streamtext.
UNITED STATES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The United States is pleased to participate in the discussion of preservation, a very important topic for libraries and archives.In our document that we put forward 26-8 we identified a number of objectives and principles in this area, including our overall objective which is to enable libraries and archives to carry out their public service role of preserving works and supporting limitations and exceptions in this area.
We’ve identified specific principles, limitations and exceptions can and should enable libraries and archives to carry out their public service role of preserving works that comprise the cumulative knowledge and heritage of the world’s nations and peoples.
To that end limitations and exceptions can and should enable libraries and archives to make copies of published and unpublished works for the purposes of preservation and replacement under appropriate circumstances.
The need for such preservation exists in a variety of media and formats, and may include the migration of content from obsolete storage formats.
We’ve also identified that it is important to enable libraries and archives to carry out their public service role mission of preservation in a digital environment, and that the digital technologies are changing how libraries and archives preserve access, preserve digital content and limitations and exceptions should appropriately ensure that libraries and archives can preserve the works in a variety of formats.
We are pleased and appreciate all of the work that has been done by Professor Cruz in his review of various legislative approaches in his recent report.
But we would like to go even deeper. We would like to also understand the rationale for different policy decisions and how various Member States may be currently considering ways to update and improve their laws in this area. We have a few questions:
What works are currently not being preserved that should be? What works should preservation exceptions cover? How have other countries dealt with distinctions between published and unpublished works in the variety of media?
We would also like to know, for example, how preservation in digital forms and dissemination of works in digital forms are affected by TPMs attached and how different Member States have dealt with preservation and dissemination in this regard.
We can ask a number of other questions, but we do recognize the very important nature of this topic and hope that we can continue to explore these issues.
Thank you.