Leg­al in­form­a­tion on the pro­vi­sion of doc­u­ments in elec­tron­ic sem­in­ar col­lec­tions of the Uni­ver­sity Lib­rary and on learn­ing plat­forms of the Uni­ver­sity

Sections 60a and 60c of the Copyright and Knowledge Society Act (UrhWissG), which came into force on 1 March 2018, contain provisions for the provision of documents in electronic seminar collections of the university library and on learning platforms of the university.

It is permissible for documents to be made available to participants in a course in a password-protected manner in electronic seminar collections or on learning platforms:

  • up to 15% of works (previously a maximum of 12% or no more than 100 pages of a work),
  • individual articles from specialist/scientific journals as well as individual illustrations or similar small works (as before: illustrations, texts up to 25 pages, sheet music up to 6 pages and film and music works up to 5 minutes),
  • so-called out-of-print works (works published before 1 January 1966 in books, journals, newspapers, magazines or other publications, which are in the physical stock of the UB and which are out of print in the book trade, i.e. for which there is no longer a publisher's offer) in their entirety (new),
  • up to 15% of works intended for teaching use in schools (textbooks) (previously only possible with the consent of the rights holder).

Printing and saving of the posted documents is permitted.

Not permitted is the provision in seminar apparatus or on learning platforms

  • of articles from newspapers or journals that are not explicitly professional journals (so-called 'newsstand journals').

It is regulated that the settlement of the appropriate remuneration for the provision of documents shall be made on a flat-rate basis or by means of a representative sample of the use. There is no individual reporting of documents made available in seminar apparatuses or on learning platforms - as was hotly debated in 2016. The exact modalities of the settlement between KMK and VG Wort are currently still being negotiated.

All provisions of the law are to be evaluated after four years. If the legislator does not act after that time at the latest, the new UrhWissG would automatically expire again in 2023.

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