It is a first success! The original contract of the Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort (VG Wort) does not come into force from 01.01.2017. VG Wort, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs and the German Rectors’ Conference have agreed that copyright-protected texts may continue to be made available digitally until 30 September 2017.
Here is some background information: The universities or the states have had a flat-rate payment model for copyrighted texts for a long time. For all the texts that we receive from our lecturers, the universities pay a flat rate.
This was to be changed with a new agreement, so that the texts would have to be recorded and paid for individually. Apart from the incredible administrative effort, this would also not be financially sustainable. Just think of how many texts we can download from OSCA!
What does that mean exactly?
For us students, this means that we will continue to receive scripts, articles and reference collections on OSCA! And we don’t have to fight for the few books in the libraries! Wohoo!
BUT: As I said, the agreement is only postponed. So it could still happen that this agreement will come into force from the next winter semester onwards. For the moment, the following applies: Inform yourself and get involved! We at Hochschulfreun.de or the AStA will of course keep you up to date. But only together with you and the other students can we make a difference.
You may have read about the petition on change.org , which found more than 88,000 supporters and thus contributed significantly to this success!
So if VG Wort should become an issue again next winter semester (and it will) and there is still no better agreement, then we need your help to take action against it. We need actionable payment models and your vote can help us get them!
If you still don’t know what it’s all about, you can read our first article on VG-Wort or the library’s FAQ again.