European court rules that libraries can digitize books

The European Union's highest court has ruled that libraries can digitize books without the permission of copyright holders. The court argues that libraries have the right to provide free information to the public and don't need to obtain licensing if they want to make books available to users through their computer systems. 

|
Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP
The interior of the Leuven University Library in Leuven, Belgium.

Libraries in Europe can now digitize books and make them available at electronic reading terminals without the permission of copyright holders, according to a ruling by The Court of Justice of the European Union.

The European Union’s (EU) highest court ruled on this issue on Thursday after it received a case in which a German university, the Technical University of Darmstadt, digitized a book but refused to obtain licensing from its publishing house, Eugen Ulmer.

The EU’s Copyright Directive grants authors and publishers the right to authorize or prohibit the reproduction of published work. But the court cited an exception to the Copyright Directive, arguing that libraries have the right to provide free information to the public, and ruled in favor of the university.

“The right of libraries to communicate, by dedicated terminals, the works they hold in their collections would risk being rendered largely meaningless, or indeed ineffective, if they did not have an ancillary right to digitize the works in question,” the court said in a press release.

In its ruling, the court specified that while users can access digitized books for free within a library, they do not have permission to print out digitized works or download and transport them via USB stick.

The case will now return to the Federal Court of Justice of Germany, who will rule on the dispute based on the high court’s decision.  

As we previously reported, in the US, a court also recently ruled on a case involving a dispute over digitized books. In November of 2013, US Circuit Judge Denny Chin dismissed a lawsuit that the Author’s Guild brought against Google over the partial digitization of over 20 million books.

The Author’s Guild believed Google’s digitization violated “fair use” under U.S. copyright law.

“Google made unauthorized digital editions of nearly all of the world's valuable copyright-protected literature and profits from displaying those works,” Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken said.

But Judge Chin ruled in favor of Google and argued that its service, Google Books, provides access of information to underserved groups who wouldn’t otherwise have it while respecting authors’ rights.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to European court rules that libraries can digitize books
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2014/0917/European-court-rules-that-libraries-can-digitize-books
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe