UK Government Will Press Ahead With Giving Away Paid Content To Libraries

Paidcontent reporting:
The UK government still aims to press ahead with plans that would allow Britain’s main libraries to harvest and make freely available material from online news publishers, including those with registration and pay walls.

On Monday, we reported the government had abandoned the plans because consultation submissions had failed to show the idea would not place extra burden on publishers, which will need to open their sites to new library indexing algorithms.

But the Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s initial announcement was ambiguous and wrongfooted some media outlets, including us. A department spokesperson now tells paidContent:UK the aim is unchanged. It will now seek detailed estimates for the cost to publishers, before actually moving ahead to implement the requirement.
Currently, the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 grants the British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, and the university libraries of Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin, the right to receive and store one copy of each printed work available in the UK. Last September, the government proposed extending this provision to offline digital publications and online publications, whether free or paid. The libraries would run harvesting programmes to grab and store the content for their users.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-uk-govt.-will-press-ahead-with-giving-away-paid-content-to-libraries