Negotiating Spaghetti Junction:

legal constraints on archiving government e-documents and websites in the UK

By

Jennie Grimshaw

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Advantages and disadvantages of web access

Free 24/7 access to government information from any location

Accessible to search engines

Facilitates current awareness

But, the presence of information on government web sites is often transitory and access is frequently lost!

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Content is lost because of ….

Change of party in power

Reorganisation of government machinery

Web site redesign

Web site closures

Significant loss ofNon-currentInformation

resulting in broken links

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Researchers are also frustrated by ….

Sudden disappearance of printed series ….

Which have moved to web only publication

Leading to the question: “Where is it?????”

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The obvious solution

Download, preserve and give access to

government e-documents and web sites in library

collections – ie

archive them!

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Legal barriers to archiving in the UK

Legal deposit law only covers printed printed works – these have to be supplied free of charge to the British Library and five other copyright libraries

Downloading and preserving web sites or individual e-documents in a library collection infringes current UK copyright law …

Unless the permission of the rightsholder(s) is gained in advance

This includes “third party” rightsholders as well as the site owner!

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The position with government documents and web sites

About 50%crown

copyright

In other cases rights held by agency

Manythird party

rightsholders

Click-uselicenseFromOPSI

Seek permissionfrom agency

Individualpermissions

needed

Success rate with permissions = 25%

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Alternative approaches

A priori opt-out

Rightsholder opts-out using agreed code – however failure to indicate preference does not negate copyright protection

A posteori opt-out

Sites archived without permission, but clear mechanism for requesting deletion available – however illegal copy made before rightsholder has a chance to object

Silence gives consent

Rightsholders are informed that their site will be archived unless they state their objection – again this does not negate copyright protection

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Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003

Enables Secretary of State to make regulations requiring the deposit of electronic documents at the British Library and the other five copyright libraries

But documents could be used on library premises only – permission from rightsholders would still be needed for remote access

Recommendations for regulations are being drawn up by the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel (LDAP)

Recommendations for regulations regarding free web sites and documents appended to them expected during 2008

Regulations expected to be implemented late 2011 at the earliest

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Initial regulations

Initial regulations would give the British Library and the other five legal deposit libraries:

Right to gather or harvest sites with freely available content with no effort required

from rightsholders

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Limitations on initial regulations

No remote access without permission

Content requiring payment excluded

Content with technical barriers, eg password protection, excluded

Libraries may be unable to convert documents to new formats as technology advances under current copyright law

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While we are waiting: British Library action

Voluntary deposit scheme

Government department/agency Total since 2003

CD-ROMs

Online

Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform

2659 23 2636

The Scottish Government 548 2 546

Home Office 500 1 499

AEA Technology 264 5 259

Department for Culture, Media and Sport

145 1 144

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While we are waiting: UK Web Archiving Consortium

Partnership formed in 2004

Comprising British Library, National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, National Archives, Wellcome Trust, JISC

Selectively archived UK web sites

National Archives gathers government sites

Archived sites made freely available at:http://www.webarchive.org.uk

Consortium now evolving into advisory body under Digital Preservation Consortium

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While we are waiting: British Library Web Archiving Service

Run on subscription basis

Users gather sites via Web Curator tools developed by BL

Sites are archived in a shared store

Will be displayed on new Internet site with redesigned interface

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An alternative solution: Web Continuity: Phase 1

This National Archives Project will initially deliver:

Regular, comprehensive and in-depth archiving of the government web estate

A digital repository accessible to search engines,

A link resolver, to redirect enquirers from the live site to the repository

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Web Continuity: Phase 2

British Library will work with the National Archives to deliver:

Systems for long-term document preservation of individual documents:

Documents identified by publishers using selection guidelines

Then “pushed” to the British Library This will enable us to fulfil our obligations to

collect and preserve published output of government

But access will still be on-site only!

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Further action is needed …

At national, European and international levels to further relax legal constraints to allow libraries :

-to archive free internet sites and the documents appended to them

- in multiple copies -to ensure their long term

accessibility - - and to enable them make the materials available

remotely

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This should lead to researchers with …