Scraped from BL site without permission but claiming fair use and public interest, and edited, into Arcturus
The terms in the British Library Direct (http://direct.bl.uk/bld/ViewTerms.do ) date at least from April 2005 so this DRM stuff has possibly gone on for most if not all of those 5 years. Here I quote selectively from the terms and conditions.
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Terms and Conditions of Use of British Library Direct
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Grant of Licence and Use of Data
You may print or download Content from the Service for your own personal use, provided that you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices.
You may not:
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engage in systematic retrieval of Content from the Service to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database or directory without prior written permission from us;
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add, copy, delete, display, distribute, modify, publish, reproduce, store, transmit, create derivative works from, or sell or license all or any part of the Content, products or services obtained from the Service in any medium to anyone, except as otherwise expressly permitted under applicable law or as described in these Terms and Conditions;
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attempt to rectify, or permit any person other than us or our agents to rectify, any fault or inaccuracy in the Content
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infringe or permit the infringement or otherwise prejudice the proprietary rights of us or the Rightsholders.
[…]
Document Ordering
All documents are supplied under licences from Rightsholders or their agent(s). We will charge a publication-specific copyright fee as set by the Rightsholder or their agent on all documents supplied in whatever format. Not all of the material in our collection is covered by such licences. Details of the specific copyright fees and excluded titles are available at www.bl.uk/catalogues/serials.html. The copyright fee will be in addition to any service or delivery charges for the supply of the document. VAT will be charged where applicable. We will not supply material in our collection that is not covered by a licence.
[…]
Supply of Documents
The contents of documents supplied are copyright works. Unless you have the permission of the Rightsholder, the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd or another authorised licensing body, you may not copy, store in any electronic medium or otherwise reproduce or resell, any of the Content, even for internal purposes, except as may be allowed by applicable law unless the document was supplied by electronic delivery or immediate delivery in which case a single copy may be printed (which may itself not be further copied).
If the document was supplied by electronic delivery, it must be downloaded from our secure server within 14 days of us sending you a notification email. The document can be accessed only once. [PMR’s emphasis]
Some documents supplied by electronic delivery and immediate delivery can be stored locally on a hard drive for up to 3 years from the time and date given on the email notification or downloading, others will expire sooner. In all instances only one printed copy may be made. After 3 years, or sooner for some documents, view and print permissions will expire and you will no longer be able to open the document.
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I set out below the terms and conditions that my own library asks me to undertake when requesting they provide me with one printed copy of an identified article held by the BL. These terms are an alternative to requesting the new Secure electronic delivery system from the BL. Whether these conditions are taken verbatim in a BL document, or whether they have been interpreted locally by my library I do not know and would welcome information on.
“! declare that:
(a) I have not previously been supplied with a copy of the same material by you or any other librarian
(b) I will not use the copy except for research for a non-commercial purpose or private study and will not supply a copy of it to any other person: and
(c) To the best of my knowledge no other person with whom I work or study has made or intends to make, at or about the same time as this request, a request for substantially the same material for substantially the same purpose.”
Clause (a) taken literally means that no-one can make more than one request for any given document. If you have lost your only permitted (printed) copy from an earlier request, you are out of luck
Clause (b) means I cannot make a copy of my copy to give to eg a student or colleague
Clause (c) means that colleague or student cannot ask for their own copy, because I already have.
So I ask the BL how I might be able to collaborate for scholarly purposes with a colleague or student from my institution, where all of us might wish to independently study at the same time a given scientific article obtained under these terms from the BL.
Sorry, quick follow up to my previous question. I put the literal string above into Google, and found that pretty much every university library in the UK quotes the conditions set out above. So it appears to be a specific document, and not one unique to each institution.
I’m not sure if you are still looking for answers on this, and if so what answers you are looking for?
A brief summary of my knowledge, although I suspect you’ve gathered all this by now:
The BL has never (afaik) offered electronic delivery of documents without DRM. This service has always been called ‘SED’ (Secure Electronic Delivery). It was originally implemented using Adobe DRM (eventually Digital Editions, something else earlier I think), and this year has been moving/moved to using a new system called FileOpen.
My experience was that librarians did raise many of the concerns that you raise here when SED was first introduced (in 2005), and many libraries did not implement to start with because of DRM issues (sometimes principle, more often practical in my experience)
However, in the end I think the advantages of offering SED to users overcame any initial reservations about it.
In terms of getting more information on this I’d recommend asking questions on the JISCMail LIS-ILL list – I think this is where you’d get more detailed and expert answers – https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=LIS-ILL