Legal Deposit Act
This is a short interview for The Oxford Student on Brittain's Department for Culture, Media and Sport's recent proposal on the implementation of the 2003 Legal Deposit Act as regards websites (http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/consultations/Digital_legal_deposit.pdf).
Tendai Musakwa:
In the proposal, the department suggests deposit libraries such as the Bodleian be legally empowered to archive freely available websites to document Britain's history.
1. What is your view on allowing deposit libraries to archive websites?
Luciano Floridi:
It is an excellent and timely idea. The online and digital nature of most of our data means that we can easily rewrite, lose or erase vast amounts of irreplaceable information. We need to use our technologies at their best in order to cope with their forgetful memories.
Tendai Musakwa:
2. The British Library has expressed dismay at the delay in implementing website deposit regulations since the 2003 act, warning that earlier versions of websites are usually deleted such that the UK has lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs' expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war because the websites were not archived. In your view, is there an urgent need to implement regulations on e-deposit?
Luciano Floridi:
Absolutely. The Museum of the Moving Image, for example, has a very valuable record of the web-based campaigns for the 2008 Presidential Election in the US (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/). Without such projects, future generations will have limited access to their historical past, cultural heritage and hence self-understanding.
Tendai Musakwa:
3. What are the potential implications of implementing the 2003 Legal Deposit Act as regards the archiving of websites on intellectual life and the UK's cultural heritage?
Luciano Floridi:
I'd like to select two in particular. We need to ensure that the archiving is fair, because what will not be archived might disappear forever; and that the accumulation of memories will not be a burden for the future, because, sometimes, forgiving requires a bit of forgetting. We should beware of what we wish to remember, because it might be a way of keeping our wounds forever open.
Tendai Musakwa:
In the proposal, the department suggests deposit libraries such as the Bodleian be legally empowered to archive freely available websites to document Britain's history.
1. What is your view on allowing deposit libraries to archive websites?
Luciano Floridi:
It is an excellent and timely idea. The online and digital nature of most of our data means that we can easily rewrite, lose or erase vast amounts of irreplaceable information. We need to use our technologies at their best in order to cope with their forgetful memories.
Tendai Musakwa:
2. The British Library has expressed dismay at the delay in implementing website deposit regulations since the 2003 act, warning that earlier versions of websites are usually deleted such that the UK has lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs' expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war because the websites were not archived. In your view, is there an urgent need to implement regulations on e-deposit?
Luciano Floridi:
Absolutely. The Museum of the Moving Image, for example, has a very valuable record of the web-based campaigns for the 2008 Presidential Election in the US (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/). Without such projects, future generations will have limited access to their historical past, cultural heritage and hence self-understanding.
Tendai Musakwa:
3. What are the potential implications of implementing the 2003 Legal Deposit Act as regards the archiving of websites on intellectual life and the UK's cultural heritage?
Luciano Floridi:
I'd like to select two in particular. We need to ensure that the archiving is fair, because what will not be archived might disappear forever; and that the accumulation of memories will not be a burden for the future, because, sometimes, forgiving requires a bit of forgetting. We should beware of what we wish to remember, because it might be a way of keeping our wounds forever open.
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