Technology of carrying information is ever-changing. The rationale for legal deposit is not.

-A framework of a technology-adaptive legal deposit act

Vebjørn Søndersrød, legal adviser, National library of Norway

The rationale for legal deposit

• Originally – censorship and preservation

• today: preservation of records of cultural and social life

• The rationale in itself is not influenced by media format or technology; in an ideal world all relevant documents should be covered by legal deposit regulations

A technology adaptive legal act

• How Norway tried to create a technology-adaptive legal deposit act

• Subject = “Documents” that contain “generally available information”.

• What is a “document”?

A technology adaptive legal act (ctd.)

• Frequent amendments should not be necessary

• The act was passed in 1989, and has not been amended since

• Example: digital documents

Today’s act and the future

• Will a technology-adaptive legal deposit act survive the future?

• We have to hope so, with reference to the 1996-study “The legal deposit of electronic publications”, prepared by a Working Group of the CDNL

• I believe the answer is ”yes” in relation to the subject of legal deposit  

Digital Rights Management and preservation of protected works

• Preservation requires duplication

• Recent amendments to the Norwegian copyright act (basis in the EU copyright directive)

• The fact that legal grounds for duplication exists, is not necessarily enough per se

Conclusion

• The rationale of legal deposit is by law secured in a way that seems quite robust concerning acquirement of new documents

• However, In my opinion, the ability to preserve DRM- (or similar) protected works, seems to be under a greater pressure