The Bundestag has passed the following law: §1 Legal status, seat (1) The German National Library (Library) is the central archival library and the national bibliographic centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. (2) The Library is a federal institution under public law with legal capacity, comprising the German Library in Leipzig, the German Library in Frankfurt am Main and the German Music Archive. It has its seat in Frankfurt am Main. §2 Tasks, powers …. Complete law: Click here Ordinance on the compulsory delivery of printed works to the German Library: Click here
Explanation: The “Deutsche Bibliothek” has always collected printed matter, so that publishers were obliged to deliver it free of charge. Now not only the name has changed to “Deutsche Nationalbibliothek” (German National Library) – the German Internet is now also to be archived. So in future, anyone from Germany who publishes Internet pages will be obliged to submit them additionally to the National Library in Frankfurt am Main at their own expense. The deadline is one week. Failure to comply may result in an administrative offence of up to 10,000 euros.
In a further step, publications that are common on the Internet, such as forum contributions and weblogs, are to be archived. Finally, according to the will of the legislator, in a third step the entire German network will be covered, i.e. also the Internet sites of clubs, associations, advertisers, private individuals. The legislator’s concern is already delicate because password-protected contents will also be affected.
Note on criminal liability: With the entry into force of the Law on the German National Library on 29 June 2006 (BGBl.I, p.1338), the German National Library was given the legal mandate to collect, index, index and archive net publications.
Accordingly, all written, visual and audio representations that are made accessible in public networks belong to the collection area of network publications. The obligation to submit includes both Internet publications with the equivalent in the print sector and web-specific media works.
The procedures for collecting network publications are in the development stage and must be brought to application maturity for use in the context of the extended collection mandate. With regard to the scope of collection, the collection technique and the making available of the publications, the concretisation of the extended legal mandate will take place in the near future by means of a new version of the compulsory delivery ordinance and the collection guidelines. As long as the German National Library has not established these procedures and specifications, it will, if necessary, not immediately accept net publications to be delivered, but will reserve them and only request them when the state of the art and the agreements permit this. In the transitional period, the German National Library will not initiate any administrative offence proceedings.
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Dr. Johannes FialaPhD, MBA, MM
Dr. Johannes Fiala has been working for more than 25 years as a lawyer and attorney with his own law firm in Munich. He is intensively involved in real estate, financial law, tax and insurance law. The numerous stages of his professional career enable him to provide his clients with comprehensive advice and to act as a lawyer in the event of disputes.
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