Legal Issues

      While intellectual property laws may seem like a completely unrelated field to libraries, in actuality some of them are very relevant to libraries. The goal of libraries is to make information resources available to people, and as such libraries must be aware of the legal ways that those information resources can be used and distributed in order to avoid breaking the law. The library must also know these laws in order to ensure that it's facilities are not used to break them.

      Some of the laws and issues surrounding intellectual property that are relevant to libraries are intellectual property rights, copyright, fair use, photocopying, licensing agreements, privacy, and censorship and intellectual freedom.

      Intellectual property rights are rights granted to the creators of works. Works that are protected under intellectual property rights include industrial properties such as trademarks, service marks, commercial names, scientific works and discoveries, inventions, industrial designs, and artistic works such as literature, music, paintings, sculptures, films, architecture, and computer programs. The intellectual property right that is most pertinent to libraries is copyright.

      Copyright laws are are laws that protect the certain rights of creators with regards to their works, specifically covering artistic creations. These rights include the following:

• Rights to reproduce the work
• Rights to create derivative works
• Rights to distribute copies and transfer ownership of the work
• Rights to perform the work publicly (for performative works)
• Rights to display the work publicly (for audiovisual works)
• Perform publicly via audio transmission (for audio works)

      Fair use of a work pertains to individual cases of use or reproduction of works that are considered legal uses of the work. Under Philippine law, the Four Factors of Fair Use are:

• The purpose and character of your use
• The nature of the copyrighted work
• The amount and substantiality of the portion taken
• The effect of the use upon the potential market

      These uses are not clearly defined, and may at times need to be ruled upon on a case-to-case basis. In general using factual information in any capacity is considered fair use. Parodies and other transformative versions of works are also allowed under fair use. For educational purposes limited distribution of partial forms of works are allowed. This may take the form of a individual chapters of a text books being made available to students or having film showings but not distributing copies of the film.

      Another instance of fair use is the partial photocopying of a work, which is a service usually offered in libraries. Libraries are not liable for what users do with photocopied copyrighted material, however libraries must prevent users from photocopying entire volumes. The only exception to this rule is the photocopying of out-of-print materials.

      Licensing agreements are contracts that give the license holder permission to use to copyrighted material without violating copyright law. They normally include provisions under which the material can be used, a period of time for which the license is valid and terms for renewal of the license. This type of agreement is usually attached to electronic resources. For libraries, licensing agreements are usually needed to access online databases and journal and other periodical subscriptions.

      Needing a renewable license to have access periodicals has become an issue for libraries. For hardcover copies of periodicals unsubscribing from the periodical just meant losing access to future content. For digital subscriptions choosing to not renew a license means losing access to both future content and content that was previously available, which could greatly inconvenience library patrons. Because of this, and because renewing licenses usually means paying a fee, libraries must choose their electronic content licenses very carefully.

      Another issue related to electronic resources and databases is the privacy of library users. While the library does collect some necessary information from users so that the circulation of books can be monitored, as soon as the book is returned the book is no longer associated with the user. Legally, libraries are not allowed to disclose the reading habits of the patrons. However, online databases have no such obligation. Often online databases act the same as other websites and collect information from their users - some of these online databases having no option to opt-out of this data collection. The library has no control over this, and there are no laws currently protecting the privacy of the users.

      Intellectual freedom and censorship are dichotomic ideas that libraries face when dealing with any type of intellectual property. Intellectual freedom is the inherent right of any individual to free access to any information without restriction. This idea promotes being able to learn and disseminate any information, and is said to be the basis of democracy. Running counter to this idea is censorship, which is the suppression of any kind of knowledge.

      Ideally, libraries are places where anyone has access to any information. Realistically, some information should not be shared. Information that has the potential to cause public harm or is obscene should not be shared. Just having access to information that could hurt someone, like for example the information needed to build a bomb, has the potential to tempt someone to do harm. As such, steps should be taken to remove this temptation. Similarly, certain materials should be censored for users of certain age ranges. Overly gory or sexual materials are not suitable for young children, and are usually censored. This system is similar to the age ratings found in movies.

      However, historically some information that should not be censored has been censored. Educational materials about sex or materials containing "radical" or even "seditious" content are sometimes censored by people who have certain biases about these issues. Library and library patrons should be aware of what types of censorship are illegal and fairly or unfairly legal in order to protect intellectual freedom.

      It is the duty of libraries to be aware of these laws and issues so that the library may continue spreading knowledge without actively breaking the law. It is also the duty of the library to educate its users as much as possible about the laws through library orientations and through signage near any photocopiers and printers - as well as to supervise the usage of these machines. One last things that libraries should do is to educate users about how their data may be used by online databases, especially since the library has no control over them.