Norway Digitizing All Norwegian Books, Regardless of Copyright Status

Norway is taking on a daunting
and liberalizing task: It is creating a digital collection of all
the nation’s books, newspapers, television broadcasts, and every
other piece of media they can get their hands on. Significantly,
even copyrighted materials will become more accessible.

The National
Library of Norway, located in Oslo and operating under the
Ministry of Culture, hopes to create a digital “memory bank by
providing a multimedia knowledge centre focusing on archiving and
distribution,” and provide easy access to “many different types of
content ranging from the Middle Ages through to the present day.”
The organization’s website adds that “the digital objects are
enriched with metadata and sustainable identifiers which will
increase the opportunities for archiving, use and reuse over the
next millennium.”

The library has already digitized an estimated 235,000
books, 240,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts, 4,000 posters,
740,000 hours of radio, 310,000 hours of television, 7,000 films,
7,000 records, and 8,000 audiotapes. Still, officials anticipate it
will take 20-30 years to become current on the task.

Anybody in the world can read and download works that are not
covered by copyright. To some extent, works still protected by
copyright will also be accessible. Although Business
Insider and
The Verge report that any copyrighted will be
accessible if one is using a Norwegian IP address, that does not
seem to be exactly accurate. Rather,
specifically 20^th century copyrighted works will require
the appropriate address.

What about documents from the 21^st century? “The
entire digital collection shall be available for research and
documentation on the National Library of Norway’s premises,”
according to the official library website.

The role of copyright laws, their implementation, and their

abuses are contestable subjects. Norway’s program does not
provide a perfect solution or route there. The fact that “the
Norwegian Legal Deposit Act requires that all published content, in
all media, be deposited with the National Library of Norway” may
rightfully irk those who would rather not be coerced by their
government.

Still, The Atlantic‘s Alexis C. Madrigal
humorously
suggests that this archive ensures Norway’s culture a certain
longevity over America’s in case of an apocalyptic event.

Tech writer Glyn Moody offers a more serious approval of
Norway’s move and gives his opinion on the problems of many current
copyright laws. He
writes for Techdirt:

Excessive copyright… not only prevents today’s artists from
building on the work of their recent forebears — something that
occurred routinely until intellectual monopolies were introduced in
recent centuries — but it even jeopardizes the preservation and
transmission of entire cultures because of publishers’ refusal to
allow copyright to move with the times by permitting large-scale
digitization and distribution of the kind envisaged in Norway.

Reason‘s own
Nick Gillespie,
Jesse Walker, and others have
covered the cumbersome issue of copyrights as well.