Developing technology and conservative legislation: the Japanese dilemma

Citation

Nishio, H. (2003), "Developing technology and conservative legislation: the Japanese dilemma", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2003.12231aab.005

Developing technology and conservative legislation: the Japanese dilemma

Developing technology and conservative legislation: the Japanese dilemma

In terms of popularity with library users, a document delivery service for all who want it comes a close third behind a browsing facility for users and on-the-spot or remote copying services. Such a service, facilitated by developing technologies in the twenty-first century, must clearly meet users' expectations. In Japan, however, the development of such a service is made difficult by the current copyright legislation, inherited from the previous century.

Users clearly hope to receive copies more quickly by electronic means than by postal delivery, frequently asking for facsimile transmission. Modern day expectations of delivery and sense of time do not match up with the speed of service offered by postal systems.

According to Japanese copyright law, the right of public transmission of a work belongs only to the copyright holder. Even a fax transmission from the library to the user is regarded as a form of public transmission, and, as such, it requires the permission of the copyright holder.

It is perhaps, understandable, to consider that a transmission of a document from a library to many or unspecified general users should be a public transmission in the legal sense. However, it seems to be the case that any transmission from the library to outside is regarded as a public transmission and, as a result, Japanese libraries cannot legally use a fax service for copies. Only materials in the public domain can be transmitted.

The National Diet Library has just opened the Kansai-kan in Kyoto, 300 miles away from the main library in Tokyo. For visitors to one site wishing to acquire copies of an item held only by the other site, we have launched a digital scanning and transmission service on a small scale using only one machine at each library. The transmission is legally allowed since it is regarded as in-house correspondence between the Kansai-kan and the Tokyo Main Library, but the service cannot be used to send items to the clients directly.

It is clear that users will be demanding the facility to browse our holdings at home on their own computer; this will necessitate full-text digitizing of our materials. The right to make materials transmittable by interactive transmission is also covered by Japanese copyright law. Although in the wording of the legislation the actual word "digitizing" is not to be found, the right to digitize materials is supposed to belong to the copyright holder. Only old materials that have come into the public domain can be digitized for public access.

The National Diet Library has opened its "Rare books images database", and to coincide with the opening of the Kansai-kan in October 2002, we also launched the "Digital library from the Meiji Era" on our Web site: http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/data/endl.html (both in Japanese).

The former is a full colour image database of some rare books and ukiyoe printings from our collection. The latter is a black and white image database of the books in our holdings published during the Meiji era (1868-1912).

In both databases, only materials in the public domain, or items that have received permission from the copyright holder for digitization are included. In Japan, the lack of a unified copyright clearing organization makes it difficult to contact copyright holders. This is another significant barrier.

We have also just uploaded on to our Web site the NDL-OPAC: http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/data/opac.html (only in Japanese at present), from October 2002, so now anyone with a computer can access it; our registered users can send orders for copies. We are now, therefore, able to accept orders in electronic format, but ironically, we can only send the copies to users by conventional means.

Hatsuki NishioAssistant Director, Public Services Division, Collections Department, Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library, Kyoto, Japan