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AIB. Commissione nazionale università e ricerca |
The introduction of new technologies has seen the development of new media for works protected by copyright. Italian legislation and, generally speaking, European laws, vary according to the medium of the work (paper, audiocassette, videocassette, radio/TV, etc.). Rights, the duration of copyright protection, and procedures for copying are all different.
New media can create difficulties: for example, new formats come out, they evolve rapidly, and there are issues regarding their diffusion and their transnational character. National legislators have threfore prefered to wait before regulating the field, while considering international developments deriving from several international conventions intended to regulate the subject, particularly with the creation of the European Common Market and of the European Union. The absence of legislation has led to an extended use of analogy, of reference to the general criteria of the legal system and – to a greter extent – of licences.
Dealing with an electronic or multimedia work creates totally new problems both for professionals and end-users. Interlinks, duplications or clonation, and off-site access introduce a series of new cases which are not always easy to resolve. It has been suggested that it will be necessary to introduce new rules which are totally different from existing legal provisions on copyright.
However, the need for new rules has been recognized – both at national and international level – within the existing framework of copyright legislation. This possibility has been taken up at international level by WIPO with the Copyright Treaty and, in Europe, by including software regulations in copyright. Italian national legislation, as in other European countries, covers the protection af any creative work whatever its form or medium of presentation. By virtue of this 'open ended' provision, all electronic works can be considered to be covered by copyright. This is important, since copyright not only covers the author's rights but also establishes some exceptions in favour of libraries and end-users, reflecting the 'dualism' of copyright and meeting the deeply felt need for the widest possible circulation of culture and information, without necessarily being subject to payment.
New technologies not only define a 'new' copyright, but also a new role for libraries. In Italy, as in so many other countries, there is no unambiguous definition of a library; the definition is only possible through analysis of the services offered by an organization perceived to be a library.
The question is therefore whether in fields other than copyright the notable new elements introduced by electronic technologies can remain rooted in the current situation, thus defining the virtual library not simply as a digitalised catalogue, but as a library in today's terms.