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Empty display case
Displaying anger … an empty display case at the National Library of Scotland
Displaying anger … an empty display case at the National Library of Scotland

Libraries show empty displays in protest against copyright law

This article is more than 9 years old
Libraries and museums across the UK show their anger at extended restrictions on public release of documents

“Don’t sorrow for me … I shall have died happily,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Robert Dunlop Smith. ”One can’t die better than in doing one’s duty. You may be sure that I shall be thinking of you all at the last …” But the display case at the National Library of Scotland which should contain Dunlop Smith’s letter is empty. The Lieutenant Colonel was killed in action in 1917, but the letter he wrote to his father to be opened on the occasion of his death was never published, and remains restricted under copyright until 2039.

The empty case is on show as part of a quiet but potent rebellion from libraries and museums across the country, who are showing their anger at copyright laws preventing them from displaying unpublished letters and diaries from the first world war, a law which they say “limits and distorts the telling and understanding of our shared history”.

Visitors to the Imperial War Museum in London, to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and to the University of Leeds have been brought up short by cases containing nothing but a note: “We would have liked to show you a letter from a first world war soldier here. But due to current copyright laws we are unable to display the original. Those laws mean that some of the most powerful diaries and letters in our collections cannot be displayed.”

Organisations marking the centenary of the war have been keen to exhibit unpublished diaries and letters; because they are under copyright protection, they need permission from the rights holder, even when the author has been dead more than 70 years (the duration of copyright for most published works). At present, copyright on certain unpublished works is to the end of 2039, regardless of their age.

But librarians’ body CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, says that up to 50% of archival records in the UK are orphan works, where the rights holder cannot be identified or traced, with the Imperial War Museum alone holding an estimated 1.75m documents that are orphan works.

The IWM pointed to one letter that it is forbidden by copyright law from exhibiting. Cornelius O’Donoghue wrote to his parents during service as a driver with the 18th Motor Ambulance Convoy in east Africa, on 8 January 1918. O’Donoghue would die from malaria in Dar es Salaam months later. “I am still in the land of the living, very much, but like the rest of the boys, I should like very much to be back in England again,” he writes. “I keep very fit … thank goodness, barring my two attacks of fever, which I shook off pretty quick.”

 The Free Our History campaign is supported by organisations including the Collections Trust, the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance and CILIP. The campaigners want the UK government to implement promised reforms to copyright law, which would reduce copyright protection in unpublished texts to the author’s lifetime plus 70 years.

As well as displaying empty cases, they have petitioned intellectual property minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe about making the changes, with almost 1,000 signatures asking for change. Neville-Rolfe’s response says that she “agrees that the term of copyright for unpublished works should be brought into line with published works”, with a consultation “on proposals to reduce the duration of copyright in certain unpublished works” currently under way.

“Government will be working hard to take the ‘2039’ regulations through parliament in the next six months,” Neville-Rolfe wrote, but campaigners believe the need for change is urgent, fearing that plans will slip down the government’s agenda with the approach of the general election.

“We have the briefest window of opportunity to resolve this important issue and make this reform to copyright law before parliament shuts down before the general election,” said Naomi Korn, chair of the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance. “It is absurd that one of the provisions of the 2013 Act is not dealt with when the rest of the provisions around copyright reform have been implemented. This delay causes unacceptable cost and administrative burden on libraries, museums and archives; not to mention risk, if they want to share access to these important historical works, because they are still in copyright.”

Fredric Saunderson, intellectual property officer at the National Library of Scotland, said that visitors who have seen the library’s blank letter display “agree it is wrong that copyright law prevents us from telling important stories like this one from the first world war and even further into history”, adding that “it’s important that we continue to keep up the pressure to achieve this change in the law ahead of the next election.”

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