Debate on informationfreedom in crisis- A study of the copyright debate in some Swedish library-oriented periodicals 1996-2001.

In the years 1996-2001 the European Union`s copyright-directive was drawn up. This directive led to much lobbying activities from both copyright holders and library organisations like EBLIDA and IFLA. The Internet and filesharing networks like Napster had led to strong reactions among some copyright holders. Internet gave people an easy opportunity of accessing copyright protected material. Some researchers of copyright have written books where they state that the copyright holders utilize authors fear of illegal copying to strengthen the copyright laws, and by that benefit economical. These authors mean that record companys for example has an interest in making the authors believe that Internet is a great danger. The copyright debating authors has tried to show that harder copyright laws will lead to the suppression of creativity and innovation. This study assume that librarians would have an interest of debating the copyright laws. This is because harder copyright laws could make the free distrubution of information to people harder. This study examines the arguments of some of these copyright debating authors and will search for similar arguments in some Swedish library oriented periodicals. All relevant articles in every issue of the periodicals has been studied. The results show that the debate in these periodicals have been much lesser frequent than assumed, and that the arguments wasnt much like the copyright were not debating authors arguments. A possible explanation could be that librarians have been so sure that copyright expertise of organisations like EBLIDA and IFLA would handle these questions alone. The knowledge about copyright has probably been too little among regular librarians for a similar debate to come up in the periodicals studied.Uppsatsnivå: