TRAC: A5.5: Coping with surprises

A5.5 If repository ingests digital content with unclear ownership/rights, policies are in place to address liability and challenges to those rights.

The repository’s policies and mechanisms must be vetted by appropriate institutional authorities and/or legal experts to ensure that responses to challenges adhere to relevant laws and requirements, and that the potential liability for the repository is minimized.

Evidence: A definition of rights; citations for relevant laws and requirements; policy on responding to challenges; documented track record for responding to challenges in ways that do not inhibit preservation; examples of legal advice sought and received.

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This is the last post in my series where I try to document ICPSR's standing wrt TRAC.  I posted the first item a long time ago on September 30, 2009.  At one post/week (and a couple of multi-week gaps) it takes a long time to work through the document.

I thought I might take a second pass through TRAC, but in this case I would use the (somewhat) newly release "magenta book" as my guide.  Ne sure to put on your sunglasses first if you decide to click the link in this paragraph.

But on to the last of the "old style" TRAC requirements....

ICPSR's deposit agreement requires the depositor to assert that s/he owns the rights to the intellectual property being deposited, and that while s/he retains those rights, s/he also grants ICPSR the non-exclusive right to preserve and disseminate (eventually) the content.  In general we don't encounter very many instances where we find that a depositor didn't have rights, and so we need to take action.

My sense is that if we found that a depositor didn't have rights - or decided that they wanted to break their agreement with ICPSR - we would pull the content from the dissemination and archival systems, and would return the content (if desired).