DigitalPreservationEurope has published PO3.4: Report on the Legal Framework on Repository Infrastructure Impacting on Cooperation Across Member States.
Here's excerpt from the "Introduction."
The focus of this paper is the legal framework for the management of content of cooperating repositories. The focus will be on the regulation of copyright and protection of personal data. That copyright is important when managing data repositories is common knowledge. However, there is an increasing tendency among authors not only to deposit their published scientific work, scientific articles, dissertations or books, but also the underlying data. In addition to this ordinary publicly available sources like internet web pages contain personal data, often of a sensitive nature. Due to this emergent trend repositories will have to comply with the rules governing the use and protection of personal data, especially in the medical and social sciences.
The scenario is the following:
- National repositories acquire material from different sources and in different formats.
- The repositories cooperate with repositories in other countries in the preservation of data.
- There is some degree of specialisation, some repositories specialise on preserving certain formats and other repositories on the preservation of other formats.
This paper describes the legal framework regulating the two decisive actions which have to take place if this scenario is to become a reality:
- The reproduction of data
- The transfer of data to other repositories
Other copyright issues like the rules concerning communication with the public and the protection of databases will also be touched upon.