Digital libraries and Copyright: “Runivers” asserts its right for free use of e-copies of “Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire”

The information service of the Russkiy Mir Foundation informs that the arbitration court of Moscow acquitted the facsimile e-library “Runivers”, which had released texts of the “Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire” on its website, of charges of counterfeit.

“Runivers” has asserted its right to freely use e-copies of Russian laws texts. Representatives of the State Public Historical Library of Russia insisted that digitization of any book – in this case the “Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire” – gives a right to place it under copyright and prohibit its free distribution. The court found arguments presented by the historical library absurd. Scanning of the book does not form copyright, the latter requires any kind of creative work, for example, creation of a collection of comments to the laws. “Representatives of the library highlighted the fact that they were the first to put up for sale CDs featuring facsimile copies of pages of the “Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire”, thus it gives them a right to consider themselves right holders. However this argument was recognized as a rather lame one”, commented Sergei Belichenko, Director of “Runivers”.

“We reckon that the court made a just decision, especially in the view of collisions of Part 4 of the Civil Code, which enables a fairly destructive use of copyright. Copyright must protect interests of an author, but not allow public domain privatization. The desire of librarians to make profits must not go against educational aims. All over the world state agencies are doing their best to provide free access to as many national historical documents as possible. In Russia you must assert this right in court”, believes Vadim Granik, the lawyer and Dean of the Information Security Faculty, the Russian State University for the Humanities.

In 2009 “Runivers” purchased CDs featuring scanned pages of a multi-volume edition “Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire” and published digitized pages on their website to make them freely available online. After that the State Public Historical Library of Russia accused “Runivers” of counterfeit and demanded to remove texts of the laws from the website, explaining that free access to texts of the laws at univers.ru prevents the State Public Historical Library of Russia from making profits.