Em bibliotecas e museus, benefícios educacionais e de preservação da memória com versões on-line esbarram em questões jurídicas e financeiras
There are some interesting developments going on in Brazil’s libraryland, but since the newspapers in Brazil write in Portuguese and First World countries don’t pay much attention to most Third World countries (let alone when it’s news about copyright laws regarding libraries, lol) non-Lusophone librarians and library lovers are missing out on the news.
So my hand slipped and I did a thing. ;)
What are the obstacles to the digitization of collections in Brazil
There are rare writings of Guimarães Rosa that can not appear in Brasiliana, the digital library of USP (University of São Paulo), for legal copyright issues. In the Brazilian Cinemateca*, the original of the film "The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga" (1965), with Leonardo Villar, deteriorates because the heirs of the filmmaker cannot reach an agreement on how much to charge to allow the digitization of the work.
They are just two examples of the obstacles faced by Brazilian memory institutions when trying to digitize their collections. The cases were cited in a 2010 report by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo and appear in the book "Digital Memories", launched in 2018 by FGV Publisher together with the CTS (Technology and Society Center) of FGV Direito Rio (Getúlio Vargas Foundation).
The book resulted from workshops held in 2014 by CTS with Brazilian and Latin American professionals in the area (some of which contribute articles). The collection of texts deals with aspects such as technology, legislation, institutional policies and financing.
In parallel, a research was carried out to try to quantify the state of digitalization of the Brazilian collections. Although the data are still being analyzed, the book's organizer and CTS researcher, Bruna Castanheira de Freitas, explained that museums are the institutions with the most incipient digitization.
On the other hand, the national collections, places such as the Historical Archive of the Army and the Archive Noronha Santos, both in Rio de Janeiro, are the category of institution with the most advanced digitization process. The National Archive itself inaugurated in September 2017 a new search tool for searching its collection.
Why Digitize
For Castanheira, the digitization serves two main objectives: the preservation of works, which in their original physical state are subject to the ravages of time, and the democratization of access to the collections, by making them available on the internet.
The researcher points out that many Brazilians live far from museums or can not afford to buy a ticket. According to the CTS survey, most of the museums are located in the South and Southeast regions of the country.
"Museums, libraries, and archives are required to join educational institutions in embracing [digitization]," Wayne Clough said in a 2013 interview when he was a secretary at the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, a government-run research entity and museum.
What Are the Judicial Obstacles
In Brazil, gaps in the Copyright Law of 1998, leave administrators of collections in a situation of legal uncertainty when the subject is scanning. According to current law, only creating a digital version of a work without the proper permission of the owner is prohibited. "It would be understood as piracy in the current law," Castanheira explained to Nexo.
In many cases, it is not possible to locate the copyright holder of an old book or photo, generating what is called an "orphan work". The book cites 2009 data that in the National History Museum in London alone, 20% of the nearly 1 million books and 25% of the approximately 500,000 items in the collection were of unknown property.
For the researcher, the law should determine procedures for practitioners of memory institutions in such cases, "to prove that they tried to find the owner but failed. Suppose there’s a book that is corroding with time in the library. The librarian is in tough spot, because her right to restore and copy that work is not legally certain.”
The legislation should be modified to contemplate the digitization "for conservation purposes", opening, in this case, an exception in copyright, according to Castanheira.
For her, at the moment there is no initiative to be seen in the federal legislature to discuss these issues. Actions by the Ministry of Culture to digitize cultural assets, such as the Tainacan platform, begin to be resumed after a period of interruption of activities.
