NATIONAL HUMANITIES ALLIANCE

BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR MANAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT


PRINCIPLE 6

6. Copyright law should assure that respect for personal privacy is incorporated into access and rights management systems.

 

Academic freedom and the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of thought, association, and speech require that individual privacy be respected. In the print environment, individuals may examine works in libraries and examine and purchase them in sales outlets without leaving records of their identities. The educational community urges that legislation be crafted to assure that the rights of individuals to access copyrighted works without recording personal identities are comparably protected in the digital environment.