2009 Conference Archive

PRESENTATION C2

THE CASE FOR A DIGITAL LENDING RIGHT

Kent Fitch
Project Computing Pty Ltd and National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT

Those involved with book creation, distribution and consumption are about to encounter the forces currently besieging the music industry. The main reasons are: 1) dramatic improvements in e-book technology, 2) the number and scale of current book digitisation projects, 3) the failure of Digital Rights Management technology to prevent unrestricted proliferation of digital resources, 4) the public's expectation that information and resources are immediately accessible and 5) the change in information seeking and consumption habits from consulting fewer resources in depth to "horizontal skimming" of many.

These developments reveal current copyright laws as unsuited to the task of balancing the competing public interests of the encouragement of creators and the widest possible access and hence greatest social benefit.

This paper analyses an approach to the balancing of these public interests based on embracing inevitable technological changes. This approach promotes efficient and free public access to copyrighted works and rewards creators based on the number of accesses to their works. Like the Public Lending Right, the proposed "Digital Lending Right" is funded by taxation to encourage a richer and better informed society by the creation and consumption of publicly accessible works.