Just when you thought that an age of enlightenment was upon us in terms of accessing data collected for the public by a publicly funded body, enter the copright tax brigade..
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131217/07042225586/copyright-strikes-again-no-online-access-to-uk-internet-archive.shtmlThe UK is preparing to launch its official internet archive without internet access, after the publishing industry put restrictions on its release.
The archive was held up by a decade of negotiations between publishers and the British Library, meaning that regulations permitting the library to perform its first archive copy of every UK website were not passed until April this year, more than 20 years since the World Wide Web took off and 10 years since Parliament passed a law making it possible.
What's particularly tragic here is that the ten years of foot-dragging and obstructionism by the British publishers has resulted in a loss of countless millions of older Web pages that are now probably gone for ever -- and with them, a key part of the UK's early digital heritage. Once again, we see that contrary to the dogma, copyright does not always promote culture, but can destroy it, too.
I think the last lines above reflect my own opinion well enough.
