Through the practice of editing culturally and historically relevant documents, textual scholars are regularly faced with legal restrictions to their scholarly endeavours – including both copyright and non-copyright restrictions such as the privacy and moral rights of authors. In practice, these added difficulties and legal uncertainties cause funding agencies, libraries, and archives to prioritise the digitisation and publication of less legally problematic materials – which threatens to cause a bias in our output as a research field. In an effort to move forward as a research community, the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS) is organising an online symposium on Legal Issues in Textual Scholarship to address these obstacles, and reflect on the legal restrictions that may affect textual scholarship in the analog and digital paradigms.

Presentation

The European Society for Textual Scholarship, in association with the University of Borås – SSLIS and the University of Lisbon – CLUL, is organising the online symposium Legal Issues in Textual Scholarship on the 27th of October 2023, via Zoom. 

We will start the day by exposing some of the problems textual scholars are facing today when they work with copyrighted materials, establishing a legal framework for our discussion, and examining the impact generative AI may have on the field — now, and in the foreseeable future. After lunch, we will continue with a series of shorter papers by authors sharing their professional experiences dealing with copyright holders and their heirs, digitising cultural heritage materials in research and pedagogical contexts, and the use of born-digital source materials. Finally, we will end the day with reflections on the Copyright Act itself, and on how we may navigate these restrictions, and work within the legal boundaries that are set for us.

Registration is open until the 22nd of October 2023 at the following URL.

For more information on the symposium, including short introductions for all speakers and abstracts for their talks, please visit the event's webpage:

https://sites.google.com/view/estslegalissues

Programme

(All times CET)

10:00-10:20 | Opening Remarks

10:20-12:00 | Panel I

Chair: Elli Bleeker (Huygens ING)

• 10:20 |  Dirk Van Hulle (University of Oxford): From the Golden Age of the Literary Manuscript to the Ice Age of Copyright 
• 11:00 |  Paweł Kamocki (CLARIN ERIC): The Times and How They Are a-Changin'. Textual Scholarship and Copyright Law Today and in the AI-Generated Future

12:00-13:30 | Lunch Break

13:30-15:30 | Panel II

Chair: Hande Özkayagan Prändl (University of Vienna)

• 13:30 |  Elsa Pereira (University of Lisbon): Authors’ Heirs Obstructing Textual Scholarship in Portugal
• 14:00 |  Maia Ninidze (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University): Digitisation of the Archives Belonging to the Heirs of the Classic Georgian Authors
• 14:30 |  Veijo Pulkkinen (University of Helsinki): A Double-Edged Sword: Digital Forensics and Research Permissions in the Study of Born-Digital Manuscripts
• 15:00 |  Wout Dillen (University of Borås): As Open as Possible, as Closed as Necessary. Navigating Legal Issues in a Course on Digitising (and Publishing) Cultural Heritage Materials

15:30-15:45 | Coffee Break

15:45-17:30 | Panel III

Chair: Wout Dillen (University of Borås)

• 15:45 | Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University): William Wordsworth, the Death of the Author, and the 1842 English Copyright Act
• 16:30 | Fatiha Idmhand (University of Poitiers / ITEM – CNRS/ENS): Manuscripts of Contemporary Authors and Copyright: Exploring the Possibilities?

17:30 | Closing Remarks