British libraries do not get harvesting access to paywalled content after all

The British government have abandoned a plan to force news publishers to allow access to paywalled content for harvesting activities for Britain’s main libraries. The libraries failed to convince the government that the benefits of this service would outshine the costs.

The main libraries of the United Kingdom, the British Library, the national libraries of Scotland and Wales and three university libraries have, since 2003, the right to receive one copy of every printed work in the UK for archiving purposes. The question arose  whether that right should also apply to digital works. Therefore, a consultation was started in September 2010.

On the basis of the responses, the British government concludes that regulations will be adapted so that offline digital works and online works that can be harvested automatically.

This harvesting, however, doesn’t work very well at news sites with a paywall. This content will remain out of the reach of the libraries’ algorithms, the government rules on the basis of the consultation: “In the light of the overall responses, and the lack of evidence from both libraries and publishers to support the case that the regulations do not impose a disproportionate burden, we do not believe that it is viable to go forward with the regulations as currently drafted unless we can find evidence of proportionality (…) and therefore propose to develop the draft regulations to include only off-line content, and on-line content that can be obtained through a harvesting process.”

Source: Paidcontent