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Rh This voluntary path is actually being pursued in various Member States, with varying results. For example, the Motion Pictures Association has entered into negotiations with the British Film Institute (BFI) regarding the right to make archival copies of films. In January 2005, the German National Library has reached an agreement with the German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the German Booksellers and Publishers Association on the circumvention of such TPMs as access and copy controls on CDs, CD-ROMs, and e-books. According to the press release, the German National Library has obtained a “license to copy” technologically protected digital content for its “own archiving, for scientific purposes of users, for collections for schools or educational purposes, for instruction and research as well as of works that are out of print.” To avoid abuses, the library “will check user’s interest” for a copy of the technologically protected content. Further, the copies, which are subject to a fee, “will as far as possible be personalized by a digital watermark”.

Until recently, libraries were able to offer digital articles as unprotected downloads that could be obtained by anyone who registered with the institution. But the deployment of DRM may become more restrictive in the near future, because major scientific publishers may want to increase the control over their products and possibly charge for individual access. The supply of a key to decrypt protected content is not considered a viable option, since for a single library subscribing to 2,000 electronic journals and periodicals, removing DRM from every single article would be too complicated in practice and impossible to manage with the available organisational resources. This would be aggravated by the multitude of different DRM systems on the market, which prevent a single approach to circumvention. Moreover, the lack of clarity with regard to the limitations on copyright leads to a multitude of different individual initiatives from the sides of rights holders, libraries and publishers. This contradicts the value proposition of digital libraries, i.e. to make knowledge broadly and easily available over the Internet. The British Library notes that the great majority of agreements relating to electronic licences also undermined