Following on from my previous post, some news:
The British Library has backed down from digitising and putting online out of copyright editions of the Times. This raises serious questions about its whole mission: are they resigned to the irreplaceable newspapers in Colindale crumbling over time, along with their deteriorating microfilm copies, without any digital preservation at all? It also sets a dangerous precedent in ceding public domain material to a private owner. Whilst this has no force in law, it has an intimidatory aspect. Still worse is that some of this material was not even created by The Times. Plus ça change….
And as a footnote, given The Times’ building of a paywall, Glyn Moody wonders whether commercial strategies should trump the public record: “Should retractions be behind a paywall?“