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Lynne Brindley, CEO of the British Library, criticises debate on Intellectual Property as ‘too focused on teenagers, music and consumer industries’

22 November 2007

Balance in IP "not working"

The British Library's Chief Executive Lynne Brindley has chaired a significant debate about Intellectual Property in the digital age and called for the IP debate to move beyond music to include society, culture and the economy. An audience of artists, creative writers and scientists debated IP issues with the panel members that included the best-selling author Tracy Chevalier, Dr Tim Hubbard of the Sanger Institute and Adam Afriyie MP, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Affirming the British Library's stance Lynne Brindley told the invited audience: "We believe at the British Library that the debate on intellectual property is too heavily focussed on teenagers, music and the consumer industries. It is important to realise that many areas of our society, culture and economy are affected by IPRs and often policy in one area has an impact on another. IPR is a complex system of checks, balances and interdependencies. IPR affects, to name just a few areas medicine, pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, the humanities, not to mention of course our culture - the list could go on and on."

She continued: "It seems to me, as CEO of the British Library and therefore representing the researcher in part, that the balance that is referred to here, between private rights and public domain, between free competition and monopoly rights - is not working; it is being undermined by a number of things from our perspective including:

  • A restrictive use of new technology (Digital Rights Management)
  • Poor or outmoded legislation (i.e. too complex, increasing durations and harmonising durations ever upward etc)
  • The public interest aspects of copyright being undermined and made irrelevant by private contract

"I think we at the British Library, echoing the intent of the Adelphi Charter, believe that while market economics are very important, the public interest also needs to be actively protected - this can be done in many different ways but one important, if not the most important way, is through enlightened and well informed legislation balancing the conflicting public and private interests that seek to create and inform our IP regime. There is a need for real innovation in business models and for the legislation to become fit-for-purpose for the digital age."

For further information and interviews, please contact: Lawrence Christensen at the British Library Press Office, +44 (0)20 7412 7114, lawrence.christensen@bl.uk or Suvi Kankainen, +44 (0)20 7412 7105, suvi.kankainen@bl.uk

Notes for Editors

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation. It includes: books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. www.bl.uk.

Intellectual Property in the Digital Age debate at the British Library, 21 November 2007

Chair

  • Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library

Panellists

  • Tracy Chevalier - Award-winning author of The Girl With the Pearl Earring, attending in her capacity as Chair of the Society of Authors.
  • Dr Tim Hubbard ­- Head of Informatics at the Sanger Institute. Responsible for the Human Genome analysis group that mapped the human genome and made it available on the web.
  • Adam Afriyie MP, Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills, member of the Science and Technology Select Committee.

The British Library's digital activity encompasses every aspect of collecting, preserving and providing access to the world's digital heritage, but also includes using digitisation technologies to open up the Library's collections to online users throughout the UK and across the world. We do this by

  • Capturing born-digital material - through voluntary deposit and other digital acquisitions and by developing a robust, scaleable storage solution through our Digital Object Management (DOM) programme;
  • Digitising our collections - working with private partners such as Microsoft on the mass digitisation of out-of-copyright books and with funders such as the JISC to digitise 4,000 hours of Archival Sound Recordings and 1 million pages of historic newspapers;
  • Digital preservation - a cross-directorate team works to address the complex preservation and access challenges posed by the diverse and ephemeral nature of digital technology; the Library's leadership of the EU-funded Planets Project aims to tackle the issue at European level;
  • Supporting research - through partnerships such as UK PubMed Central, a free and permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.

For more information visit: www.bl.uk/digital