On Tuesday 29 October CIPPM Director Maurizio Borghi gave a seminar on “Freedom of information and copyright law in the age of mass digitization”.

The seminar discussed the legal and policy implications of mass digitization, namely the conversion of copyright works in digital format on an industrial scale to form part of digital libraries and large aggregations of data.

While digital technology, in the last twenty years, has challenged a number of established copyright principles, mass-digital technologies and practices are progressively changing the legal paradigm. Although mass digitization promises to enhance access to the world’s cultural heritage, is also a bears the risk of generating new and not readily transparent monopolies on knowledge and information. The seminar discusses the viability of a new regulatory framework for the ‘mass-digital age’.

The seminar expands on the argument developed in the book Copyright and Mass Digitization (M. Borghi & S. Karapapa), published by Oxford University Press in 2013