Library groups endorse Geneva Declaration

Four major library associations –the AALL, ALA, ARL, and SLA– have endorsed the Geneva Declaration. From their press release (September 27, 2004): “In recent years, our library organizations have been concerned about a number of trends that have combined to limit access to knowledge. These include, among others: [1] the lengthening of the copyright term which substantially delays works from entering the public domain; [2] the development of legal protections for technological protection devices without consideration of whether the circumvention of such a measure would be done for a lawful purpose; and, [3] the efforts to develop new protections for databases containing facts and other public domain material. Our organizations believe that these recent efforts to expand intellectual property rights have gone too far and must be brought back into balance. The development of a new agenda will give WIPO the opportunity to take a leadership role in re-crafting the necessary balance. In doing so, we urge WIPO to affirmatively seek to balance the rights of creators with the rights of users. This may call for the rollback of recent expanded protections or the development of new user rights to counterbalance them. We also urge WIPO to deal creatively with the issues raised by digital technology to provide appropriate levels of protection while also supporting the rights of users to effectively use the new technologies.”

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i also endorsed this geneva convention. i think it heads in the right direction.