Legal and technical difficulties of web archival in Singapore
| Autor | Jhonny Antonio Pabón Cadavid - Johnkhan Sathik Basha - Gandhimani Kaleeswaran |
| Cargo | Ph.D. Candidate, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Magister Science (MSc) in Knowledge Management, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Master of Arts in History (2008), puj, Colombia, llb, Universidad Externado de Colombia, and has worked as a researcher on Intellectual Property in Colombia and New Zealand - MSc in ... |
| Páginas | 35-54 |
35
jhy ati pab cadavid**
jhkha athik baha***
gadhiai kalwaa****
Introduction
Web archiving is a recent area of study that emerges at the end of the 20th century
the purpose of which is to avoid a digital black hole in world history. The increasing
publication of born digital information through the World Wide Web, and the
international recognition of such publications as part of cultural heritage –digital
heritage- have alerted governments to the significant national value of preserving
web publications.
In Asia only South Korea, Japan, China and Singapore are doing national
web archiving in their respective national libraries. Web archival is an issue of
legal and technical difficulties
of web archival in singapore*
* This is a short version of our final critical inquiry research paper at ntu 2013 and
a conference presented at ifla World Library and Information Congress Singapore 2013.
Thanks to Ang Peng Hwa (Director of the Singapore Internet Research Centre, ntu) for
his guidance and to Peter Lor (South Africa) and Brian Opie (New Zealand) for their
comments and suggestions.
** Ph.D. Candidate, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Magister Science
(MSc) in Knowledge Management, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Master
of Arts in History (2008), puj, Colombia, llb, Universidad Externado de Colombia,
and has worked as a researcher on Intellectual Property in Colombia and New Zealand.
E-mail: pabonjhon@myvuw.ac.nz
*** MSc in Knowledge Management, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Bachelors in Production Engineering from psg college of Technology, Coimbatore,
India (2008) and has worked with ibm for IT Consulting in Chennai, India. E-mail:
sathikba001@e.ntu.edu.sg
**** MSc in Knowledge Management, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering in Stream of Information Technology at Anna University,
Chennai, India (2008) and has worked in the software industry as application engineer.
E-mail: kaleeswa001@e.ntu.edu.sg. Fecha de recepción: 18 de marzo de 2014. Fecha de
aceptación: 17 de mayo de 2014. Para citar el artículo: Pabón Cadavid, J.A.; J.S. Basha
y G. Kaleeswaran, “Legal and Technical Difficulties of Web Archival in Singapore”,
Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial n.º 18, Universidad Externado de Colombia, noviembre
de 2014, pp. 35-54.
Jhonny Antonio Pabón Cadavid, Johnkhan Sathik Basha y Gandhimani Kaleeswaran
36
.º 18 - b 2014 - . 35 - 54
international concern. Its development depends on cultural, legal, economical and
political values in each country, which define the scope, objectives, functionalities
and importance of web archival.
The complexity of web archival brings new legal challenges for the management
of digital collections at the international and national level, especially within legal
deposit legislation and copyright law. These difficulties cover the spectrum from
the harvesting of contents to the use of the Web Archive by users.
Political-ethical aspects of web archiving
Web Archiving faces several ethical issues in any of the different areas of its infor-
mation management cycle. What is to be preserved? Who is responsible for preser-
vation? Who decides who gets access, under what circumstances, to what materials?
These questions underline archival practices in the face of Web Archiving, but there
are some characteristics of digital information and Web Archives that raise specific
ethical issues.
One big difference between print and digital publications is the sense of per-
manence, which “is a vital principle of cultural heritage: the raison d’etre of col-
lecting is to retain a cultural identity and to build up the resources—the cultural
and research collections—that permit cultural enrichment, facilitate research,
and bring wider social and economic benefits to the society that supports and
finances that collecting activity” (Mason, 2007). Ephemeral print publications
have been archived on a very small scale, but in Web Archiving a large number
of digital publications that by intention tend to be ephemeral could be collected
and preserved in the long term (Lor & Britz, 2012): for instance, twitter messages;
comments in forums, opinions in articles, Facebook posts and other user-generated
content which creators do not expect would be preserved by memory institutions
for intergenerational purposes.
Another issue that can arise from web archiving is censorship, by which control
over intellectual production in the Web can be exercised. For instance, a Singa-
porean caricaturist and blogger received a notification from the National Library
regarding the archiving of his website and blog. He expressed his fear of vigilance
for archiving in a comic way, commenting: (archiving is) “Bad in the sense that I
got to be careful of what I post. Hahaha…” (Portrait Workshop, 2007). In addition,
censorship through web archiving can be effected by limiting access to materials
for researchers; the intentional deletion of websites or negligence to collect and
preserve some websites for political or other reasons is a form of censorship af-
fecting present and future researchers. For instance, copyright law could be used
with political motivations to order the deletion and removal of material archived.
In some situations Web archives are research projects involving extremely
sensitive issues as the creation of web archives of the dark web for the analysis of
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