The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a "private right to copy".
It would decriminalise millions of Britons who break the law each year by copying their CDs onto music players.
Making copies of CDs and DVDs for personal use would have little impact on copyright holders, the IPPR argues.
The report looks at how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies - which restrict the sharing of music or other intellectual property - are affecting attempts to preserve electronic content.
It argues that the British Library should be given a DRM-free copy of any new digital work and that libraries should be able to take more than one copy of digital work.
Ms Withers said: "We charge the British Library as being the collective memory of the nation and increasingly it has to archive digital content.
"More and more academic journals are delivered digitally but copyright laws aren't designed to deal with digital content."
She said there was often a conflict between DRM and accessibility technologies which needs to be addressed.
"Someone with poor sight may use a screen reader technology and may have to change the format of the content to use it but some DRM technology isn't sophisticated enought to take this kind of thing into account," she said.
The report also calls for the government to reject calls from the UK music industry to extend the copyright term for sound recording beyond the current 50 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6095612.stm
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Whatcha think?
It would decriminalise millions of Britons who break the law each year by copying their CDs onto music players.
Making copies of CDs and DVDs for personal use would have little impact on copyright holders, the IPPR argues.
The report looks at how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies - which restrict the sharing of music or other intellectual property - are affecting attempts to preserve electronic content.
It argues that the British Library should be given a DRM-free copy of any new digital work and that libraries should be able to take more than one copy of digital work.
Ms Withers said: "We charge the British Library as being the collective memory of the nation and increasingly it has to archive digital content.
"More and more academic journals are delivered digitally but copyright laws aren't designed to deal with digital content."
She said there was often a conflict between DRM and accessibility technologies which needs to be addressed.
"Someone with poor sight may use a screen reader technology and may have to change the format of the content to use it but some DRM technology isn't sophisticated enought to take this kind of thing into account," she said.
The report also calls for the government to reject calls from the UK music industry to extend the copyright term for sound recording beyond the current 50 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6095612.stm
----------
Whatcha think?