Paul Greenwood and Martina Lange-Rein report on TECUP. This project is concerned with the role of libraries, authors, publishers, collecting societies and subscription agents in the digital environment. The central question addressed is, how access to digital material can be provided using the latest technology without infringing copyright and in cooperation with all players in the value chain.
TECUP [1] (Test-bed Implementation of the European Copyright framework) is funded by DG Information Society (formerly DG XIII) of the European Commission under the Telematics for Libraries Programme. It started at the end of 1998 and will run until the end of 2000. TECUP is a meta-project, which gathers information on, and studies, projects of different kinds concerning digital uses. The feasibility of practical mechanisms for rights acquisition for the distribution, archiving and use of electronic products from different types of content owners and involving different types of libraries is analysed.
One of the main aims of TECUP is to bring together representatives of all the major players in the value chain. The project partners represent libraries, authors, publishers and collecting societies from across Europe.
TECUP evolved from a meeting of representatives of the main players in 1996, during the ECUP project. At that meeting there was disagreement as to the copyright exceptions needed for libraries in the digital environment, but at the same time a consensus emerged that all the players needed to work together in developing business models for licencing in the digital future. Further meetings followed at which first the outline and then the details of a new project were agreed and proposals were submitted to DGXIII of the European Commission for EU funding.
Between 1996 and 1999 the whole digital environment changed dramatically both in terms of the evolution of technology and, perhaps more importantly, in the thinking of those involved. The concept and aims of TECUP also changed. Originally it was seen as a means of testing and analysing models for the distribution, archiving and use of electronic products. It evolved into a meta-project which would not carry out testing itself but would feed off and analyse the results and methodology of other projects, both national and international, covering the whole spectrum of digital uses, with a view to identifying best practices in the interests of all the players.
In the first phase of the project, information was gathered on a large number of projects. We adopted a broad criterion for the interpretation of the term ”project”, to include licencing services available world-wide. From an original list of 70 projects 46 were selected for further study, divided into three broad categories, retrodigitisation, born digital and self publishing. We decided to adopt an empirical approach. First we assembled publicly available information, making extensive use of the internet. Then we sent a questionnaire to each project. On the basis of information assembled in this way we established a short list of 25 projects for detailed analysis from a legal, strategic, and technical point of view, and advisory boards have been established to examine each aspect. Of course the same project may be of interest from two of these aspects, or even all three. The Legal Advisory Board and the Technical Advisory Board have already completed their work. The Strategy Advisory Board, including international and European organisations representing all players, started its work at the end of May 2000.
The conclusion of the Legal Advisory Board was that contractual solutions need to be found to copyright and other issues. In some cases the appropriate contractual partner for libraries will be a publisher, in others a Reproduction Rights Organisation (RRO such as VG Wort in Germany) representing large numbers of authors as well as publishers. The fact that digital rights may be with authors as well as publishers needs to be taken into account. While licences can and do take into account exceptions to the exclusive rights in legislation, libraries cannot rely on copyright exceptions alone in the digital environment.
The LAG further concluded that there are no major problems of principle with licences except regarding perpetual access and warranty clauses, concerning which TECUP will be making recommendations.
The project held a workshop in Frankfurt at the end of October 1999 at which both TECUP and eight key projects under study were presented and discussed.
The programme included the following presentations:
TECUP / Emanuella Giavarra
New Journal of Physics (NJP) / Peter Reineker
Author funded electronic publishing of original research articles in
physics [2]
Elektra / Inkeri Salonharju, Helsinki University Library
and Jukka Pekka Timonen, KOPIOSTO (the Finnish RRO)
Finnsh joint project involving libraries, publishers, learned societies
and copyright organisations for electronic publishing and network access
to publications [3]
National Electronic Site Licence Initiative (NESLI) / Fred
Friend
Widespread delivery and use of electronic journals in UK universities
through a national licence based upon fair prices and terms [4]
Decomate II / Hans Geleijnse
EU project involving publishers, academic libraries and subscription
agents in various EU member states to provide the end-user with access to
heterogeneous information resources distributed over different libraries
in Europe using a uniform interface leading to a working demonstrator of
the European Digital Library for economics [5]
Laurin / Ingrid Mauritzen
Pan-European project involving libraries, universities and collecting
societies in various countries aimed at working out the technical,
organisational and legal prerequisites to support newspaper clipping
archives in their transfer from an analogue to a digital mode of operation
[6]
EZUL, EJOUR / Hildegard Schäffler
German project dealing with the provision of e-journal articles on a
national scale [7]
Higher Education Resources ON-demand (HERON) / Carolyn
Rowlinson
UK electronic Libraries Programme project designed to improve electronic
delivery of course materials within Higher education Institutions and to
enable HELs to market their own learning resources [8]
LINK / Thomas Rakow
Information service developed by Springer Verlag, Germany, offering high
quality information online [9]
The workshop was the culmination of the process of information-gathering which had been going on since the start of the project at the beginning of 1999. More information about this special event is available online [10].
The process of evaluation (detailed analysis of the legal, technical and strategic aspects) began after the workshop and will continue until the end of the project in December 2000.
The Strategy Advisory Group (SAG) held its first meeting of three in May 2000. Authors, publishers, libraries, RROs and subscription agents were represented at the international level. The SAG will define the key issues concerning the role of libraries in the digital environment taking into account the concerns and point of view of each of the players and drawing on the comparative analysis of projects developed by TECUP. Thomas Dreier, Professor at the Institute of Jurisprudence at Karlsruhe University / Germany, will develop a report in consultation with the SAG. The hope and objective is that not withstanding the different interests of the main players a consensus will emerge about the best way forward in the interests of all concerned.
A concertation meeting, where all results of TECUP will be presented, is planned for the 1 of December 2000 [11].
Paul Greenwood
International Affairs
Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, Munich
Martina Lange-Rein
Projectmanager of TECUP
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1
D-37070 Goettingen
Tel: +49 - 551-39 3855
Fax: +49 - 551-39 2361
e-mail: tecup@mail.sub.uni-goettingen.de
For citation purposes:
Paul Greenwood and Martina Lange-Rein, "TECUP (Test-bed Implementation of the European Copyright Framework)", Exploit Interactive, issue
7, 2nd October 2000
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue7/tecup/>
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