Digital Public Library of America wants to lend copyrighted works : Columbia Journalism Review

For this launch, the founders of the DPLA focused on finding and making available resources that are in the public domain, either because of their age or their provenance. But as the DPLA grows, the founders intend for it to cover a much wider world of material, including works that are still protected by copyright. One founder, Harvard’s University Librarian, Robert Darnton, has said that they’re working to build 'a non-commercial library that would make the cultural heritage of America available to all Americans and to everyone in the world with access to the Internet.' And to do that, the library’s founders, board members, and staff will have to figure how the library will handle works still under copyright ... in the digital world, where it’s trivial work for a borrower to duplicate a book or a piece of music and disseminate it freely, where more than one person could easily 'borrow' a book at the same time, it’s not clear how libraries can or should make copyrighted works digitally available to the public. Board members of the DPLA have identified copyright as the most difficult issue that the library faces ... The DPLA has some of the same ambitions as Google Books, to which it’s often compared, and it faces one of the same key questions: How can one institution make the broad sweep of cultural creation available to as many people as possible? Google Books answered that question by scanning reams of books, making them searchable, and facing up to the legal ramifications later. The company is still fighting legal challenges to this strategy. The DPLA’s approach to this problem differs in two key ways from Google.  'We’re doing it not-for-profit. And in copyright, that distinction actually does matter,' says Palfrey. Copyright law has special exemptions carved out for libraries that allow them to use copyrighted works in ways that most consumers cannot. 'It’s not an on/off switch. But it makes a difference,' he says.  The other key difference in strategy? 'We’re going to do this carefully.'  That’s why the library opened with only public domain works in its collection ..."