copyright is sometimes described as an agreement between two parties: the creators and their audience. In exchange for a monopoly protected by the government on making copies, the creators promise to place their works in the public domain at the end of the term of copyright. The problem with this story is that time and again, the public is frustrated with what is owed.

For example, the term of copyright can be extended retrospectively, meaning that the material would be locked up for longer than promised in the "treatment." Or there may be a privatization of public domain material, the use of contracts, as reported here by Communio:

Last week, the National Library of France (BNF) has signed two new agreements with private companies to digitize over 70,000 ancient books, 200,000 sound recordings and other documents belonging (partially or completely) in the public domain. While these public-private partnerships enable the digitization of these works also contain 10-year exclusive agreements that allow private companies that perform marketing digitizing scanned documents. During this period, only a limited number of these works may be proposed by the BnF online

COMMUNIA Points Notes:.

The value is in the public domain in the free dissemination of knowledge and the ability for all to access and create new works based on previous work. However, instead of taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digitization, the exclusivity of these agreements will force public bodies such as research institutes and university libraries to acquire digital content belonging to a common cultural heritage.

As such, partnerships are a commodification of the public domain by contract.


such initiatives are usually justified by the fact that there is no other way to digitize books and records. But this is not quite true: the money could be taken from other projects to pay for such work. It is really a question of priorities. These "public-private" partnerships stem from the fact that institutions such as the National Library of France have been fighting for the public domain, despite their tutors, and accepted its privatization.
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