📅 Date: Friday, 4 July 2025
🕚 Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
📍 Location: Anthropole Building – Room 1031, Lausanne
We are proud to announce that Internet Archive Europe will be participating in this year’s LIBER 2025 Annual Conference as part of a powerful and timely panel titled “Four Rights for Libraries.” Moderated by our very own Jeff Ubois, this session brings together legal and policy experts from across Europe to spotlight how the rights long exercised by libraries are being eroded in the digital realm—and what we can do about it.
📚 Defending Library Rights in a Digital-Only World
The shift from owning physical materials to licensing digital content has created unprecedented challenges for libraries. License agreements often prohibit the preservation of digital works, making access to in-copyright but out-of-commerce materials a legal grey zone, or outright impossible. These barriers threaten not only long-term preservation efforts but also the principles of equitable access to knowledge and culture.
At LIBER 2025, our panel will explore these challenges and outline a proactive framework for securing Four Essential Rights for libraries:
- The Right to Collect: Enable libraries to acquire digital materials—regardless of format or delivery mechanism—through legal means, including streaming-only content and open-market purchases.
- The Right to Preserve: Guarantee that libraries can preserve, repair, and reformat digital content to ensure long-term access.
- The Right to Lend: Uphold libraries’ ability to lend digital content under fair and traditional conditions, such as one-person-at-a-time access.
- The Right to Cooperate: Allow for sharing and transferring digital collections among libraries to support underserved communities and global equity in access.
These principles are not merely aspirational. Governments, associations, and institutions are beginning to adopt them. For instance, the Government of Aruba has already endorsed this framework (read more), with similar commitments under consideration across the globe.
🎤 Meet the Panel
This panel brings together some of the most forward-thinking minds working at the intersection of policy, law, and digital access:
- Justus Dreyling – Policy Director @ COMMUNIA.
- Caroline De Cock – Head of Research @ information labs.
- Peter Routhier – Deputy General Counsel @ the Internet Archive.
- Moderator: Jeff Ubois – Board member @ Internet Archive Europe.
🔍 A Look Ahead: Building on LIBER’s Legacy
This session builds on LIBER’s longstanding commitment to digital knowledge access, including its signing of the Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age (read more). By spotlighting current threats and proposing practical solutions, the “Four Rights for Libraries” panel aims to renew and expand that legacy for future generations.
🧭 Why This Matters
As more cultural works are born digital or digitally restricted, libraries must be empowered—not shackled—by the law. This panel offers a vision for a future where libraries can fulfill their essential public mission: preserving knowledge and making it available to all.
We look forward to seeing you in Lausanne. Join us to be part of the movement shaping the digital rights of libraries worldwide.
