“Let Libraries be Libraries”: Knowledge Rights 21 Joins the Our Future Memory Movement
Internet Archive Europe (IAE) is pleased to welcome Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) as the latest signatory to the Our Future Memory Statement on the Four Digital Rights of Memory Institutions.
KR21 is a pan-European advocacy coalition working to ensure that copyright and information law serves the public interest. Their signature adds one of the most evidence-driven voices in European library policy to a movement that now includes the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the International Council on Archives (ICA), the Wikimedia Foundation, and hundreds of libraries, archives, and museums across six continents.
KR21 Co-Founder Ben White welcomed the signing:
“Knowledge Rights 21 is delighted to sign the Our Future Memory Statement. Intersecting with our own work, the call to ensure that laws adequately support the ability of libraries and archives to preserve and give access to their collections in digital form could not be more urgent. Many of our institutions transitioned to a hybrid analogue and digital working environment in the 1990s. Nevertheless, nearly three decades later the law has not caught up. As memory institutions that preserve the cultural and scientific heritage of mankind, we need policymakers to act now before it is too late.”
Let Libraries be Libraries
KR21’s commitment to the Our Future Memory Statement sits alongside an active programme of advocacy work. The KR21 Library Action Plan, “Safeguard Access, Empower Europe,” sets out nine concrete steps the EU and national governments should take to ensure libraries can function in the digital age as they do in the physical one.
The plan addresses a structural problem. When libraries buy physical books, they own them. When they license digital content, the terms are set entirely by publishers. Publishers can refuse to license to libraries at all, withdraw titles without notice, and impose unlimited liability on libraries for what their users do with AI tools. That last clause has become a dealbreaker: libraries that cannot accept unlimited liability simply cannot sign the contract, and the content disappears from their collections.
The consequences are not abstract. In 2022, Wiley removed over 1,300 e-books from Irish library collections without warning, after reading lists had already been agreed with faculty for the academic year. Students lost access to confirmed course materials at the start of term. Libraries inherited the fallout with no recourse and no time.
Copyright law has not kept pace either. A decade after the Court of Justice of the European Union established a legal basis for e-lending, no member state has meaningfully implemented the ruling. Remote access to digital collections remains legally uncertain. Libraries mandated by governments to support lifelong learning cannot use the same digital education tools as schools and universities. The gap between what libraries are asked to do and what the law allows them to do keeps widening.
KR21’s nine-point action plan is specific about what needs to change: guaranteed access to digital materials on reasonable terms, contract protections that publishers cannot override, a workable framework for out-of-commerce works that are sitting inaccessible on library servers across Europe, and education exceptions that extend to the institutions governments have charged with supporting learning.
A Growing Movement – Time for Your Organisation to Join
The Our Future Memory Statement calls on policymakers to ensure that memory institutions retain online the same rights they have always held offline: the right to collect, to preserve, to provide access, and to cooperate across borders. KR21’s signature strengthens the case that these are not niche technical concerns. They are conditions for libraries to function as public institutions.
IAE encourages every organisation that supports open access to knowledge to add its name. No institution is too small, and the breadth of the sector is as important as the weight of its largest members.Sign the Statement at ourfuturememory.org.
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