Auswirkungen des Urheberrechts und seiner Beschränkungen auf Digitale Bibliotheken in Polen

The author explains what kind of legal barriers make it so difficult to build digital libraries and scientific repositories. She tries to convince authors and publishers to make public the greatest possible number of scholarly works on the Internet. She discusses the historical reasons why copyright law was established. Also, she shows present reasons which don’t favor opening subsequent amendments but rather extending the term of legal protection. A public domain and importance of its protection for good of all and finding a balance among creators’ rights, content providers, and users of these works are brought up as the significant subject matter in this paper. Therefore, the author raises the important issue of copyright reform and indicates a direction of changes. The base of the reforms should be social agreement assuming a fair social contract taking into account the interests of all parties and above all, the creators and users. These two roles begin to coalesce: the creator is often a user and vice versa. The copyright law should be a tool which used in a sustainable way can serve the public. The author presents practical examples of the malfunction of law which limits innovation and sharing of knowledge and culture