June 27, 2006
Copyrigh new law
The Congreso de los Diputados (The House of Commons), has passed a new copyright law on June 22th of 2006. Its aim is to transpose to the Spanish legislation the content of the European guideline about the Information Society. Finally, and after the controversy gathered round it, the new law includes a tax for each private copy to a digital formats, hard discs, and ADSL lines will be regulated by another rules. The Culture Department, will set, each two years, the list of the digital supports which are subject to tax and the amount of money to pay for each copy. About the right to quote, we have to say that the law recognize the right for the “periodical compilations as reviews or press journals".
Permanent link: P.URL | Category: Intelectual property | Published: June 27, 2006
December 28, 2004
Copyright and public lending right
The European Commision and the politicians and professional representatives from several countries of the European Union keep on finding difficulties in elaborating laws on public loan of works in libraries. After the pression carried out by library sectors, with the suppport of a big number of authors (see web pages where actions are gathered), the European Commision have decided take Spain, Ireland and Portugal to the Tribunal de Justicia. The reason is expressed in the press release in the following way: “Not having integrated completely in their national legislation the public loan right previewed in the Directiva 92/100/CEE about renting and loaning rights and other rights related to royalties in the field of copyright”. On the other hand, the Commision have started the infraction proceedings against Denmark, Filand and Sweden, countries that payed partialy for the public loan, because it just affected local authors or those who wrote in nacional languages.
Permanent link: P.URL | Category: Intelectual property | Published: December 28, 2004
January 20, 2004
Copyright in libraries
The European Commission has started proceedings to different countries – including Spain- for letting works loaning without paying royalties to the authors. In view of this, different organizations are spreading protest documents, due to the great problem that would mean, above all for public libraries, to have to face this expense. The Bibliotecarios por la Paz (Librarians for Peace) press release was as follows: ”Related to the European Commission diktat to pay for the public loaning of books, librarians want to express our firm rejection to this measure. We understand that public and university libraries contribute in a decisive way to reading promotion, thanks precisely to its services of public loaning, to the facilities of free access consultation and to all the bibliographic services and documentary that these centres offer. Without damaging authors, libraries facilitate the knowledge and spreading of their works, literary, scientific, artistic... works that, many times, are adquired by users once they have known them in libraries. In a country like ours, with one of the lowest rate of reading in the European Union, specially among young people, this would mean, without any doubt, the disappearance of the few reading habit, and it would contribute to a bigger knowledge of the best of science, humanities and arts existing among the funds of our public or university libraries. Undoubtedly this measure has to do with the neoliberal politics of privatisation, damage and progressive reduction of our public services, reason why we will also demand its inmediate removal.
Permanent link: P.URL | Category: Intelectual property | Published: January 20, 2004
June 19, 2003
Library loan and copyrights in France
France have just approbed a law related to the loaning remuneration in libraries in concept of royalties. The law 2003-517, June 18th 2003, published in the Official Diary June 19th 2003, modifies the legislation about intelectual property in this country. The new law, that will have to be completed by an act, stablishes two systems to calculate the quantity that will be given in concept of royalties. In one hand, they will start with the number of users (except in school libraries) and, on the other hand, with the price of the works in shops. The beneficiaries of this remuneration, in some cases payed by the State, will be authors and publishers. We still have to know how this law is articulated and how it will affect libraries.
Permanent link: P.URL | Category: Intelectual property | Published: June 19, 2003
