Digital libraries and Copyright: Web-conference highlights problems of introduction of amendments to Part 4 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation

On March 1 2011 at 12 a.m. the Russian State Library jointly with the Russian Association of Electronic Libraries held a web-conference with its central theme “Draft amendments to Part 4 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation”.

The new version of Part 4 of the RF Civil Code has been worked out by the Research Center of Private Law under the President of Russia. Its authors offer to introduce a new version of the Article 1275, which in fact places all public libraries beyond the scope of the copyright. It means that libraries will be entitled to convert books into electronic format without authors’ or publishers’ consent and without royalty payments and offer its users access to scientific and educational literature, old, damaged, rare and valuable editions.

The possibility of introduction of such a provision sparked fierce debates in Mass Media and became a reason for an open confrontation between authors and publishers with librarians.