Glyn Moody, The Great Digitization Or The Great Betrayal? | Techdirt

"[T]he strict terms and conditions [of the Cambridge University's Digital Library] are not so praiseworthy: "Subject to statutory allowances, extracts of the Content and University Material from the site may be accessed, downloaded and printed for your personal and non-commercial use and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to material posted on the site. Unless explicitly licensed or permitted by us, you may not: use any part of the Content or University Material on the site for direct or indirect commercial purposes...modify or alter the paper or digital copies of any Content or University Material printed off or downloaded in any way; sell, resell, license, transfer, transmit, display in any form, perform, hire, lease or loan any Content or University Material in whole or in part printed or downloaded from the site; systematically extract and/or re-utilise substantial parts of the Content or University Material from the site; create and/or publish your own database that features substantial parts of this site...." [These terms apply even to works in the public domain such as Isaac Newton's scientific papers.] At least the Cambridge University Digital Library allows "personal and non-commercial use" for free; the British Library's new British Newspaper Archive doesn't even permit that....This current trend to limit access to digitized versions of public domain materials is a real betrayal of the original mission of public libraries like the British Library. These made possible the opening up knowledge to huge numbers of ordinary people who otherwise would never been able to access these materials. Today's massive digitization projects, which ought to be building on and extending that great tradition, are actually reversing it by seeking to take texts out of the public domain and charge for access to them. That's not just a shame, it's a scandal."