Rescuing BBC Domesday

Intellectual Property Rights and BBC Domesday

BBC Domesday is not just a technical challenge for those hoping to preserve it for posterity. Copyright law must be considered in how it restricts work to preserve, archive and potentially give access to the digital resource.

Many different copyright owners contributed a range of different types of data to the Domesday Project for inclusion on the discs. Unfortunately it is unclear as to exactly who contributed and under what circumstances the data in question can be used. The following list gives some indication of the range of materials involved:

sets of photographs, some professional, and some from a national photographic competition
a range of text from various published sources such as newspapers and magazines
a set of seven short moving sequences of news and sports events from the UK in the years 1980 to 1986
maps licensed from the UK Ordnance Survey

The following report discusses these issues in more detail : "Legal issues arising from the work aiming to preserve elements of the interactive multimedia work entitled The BBC Domesday Project".

Preservation now, access later?

Charlesworth argues that copyright law represents a two way bargain. The rights of copyright owners are protected for a certain period and in return, the protected information will go back into the public domain when that period expires. If no preservation action is taken until the end of the copyright period, many digital objects would undoubtedly be lost. CAMiLEON argues strongly that we should not be discouraged from preserving digital materials now, simply because we cannot give access until later. Holdsworth, CAMiLEON and others have made convincing arguements for this position. It is hoped that in some cases more will be possible as Kahle suggests.

Is access possible now?

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48) states:

42.-(1) The librarian or archivist of a prescribed library or archive may, if the prescribed conditions are complied with, make a copy from any item in the permanent collection of the library or archive-

(a) in order to preserve or replace that item by placing the copy in its permanent collection in addition to or in place of it, or
(b) in order to replace in the permanent collection of another prescribed library or archive an item which has been lost, destroyed or damaged, without infringing the copyright in any literary, dramatic or musical work, in any illustrations accompanying such a work or, in the case of a published edition, in the typographical arrangement.

(2) The prescribed conditions shall include provision for restricting the making of copies to cases where it is not reasonably practicable to purchase a copy of the item in question to fulfil that purpose.

This suggests that access may be provided to BBC Domesday running under emulation if:

The original discs are owned by the provider
Only one use at a time is made per original set of Domesday discs
BBC Domesday running under emulation on a modern computer constitutes a copy not a new version of BBC Domesday.

CAMiLEON argues that there is a strong case to support the assertion that the CAMiLEON emulation of BBC Domesday represents a copy and not a new version of the object.

BBC Domesday FAQ