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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.
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Published: January 20, 2004
Category: Intelectual property
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