Minister Moes: “When you think of heritage, you quickly think of old books, buildings, or items you can hold. And we all know how important it is to take care of those. Now that our lives are increasingly taking place in the digital world, it is time to ensure that we preserve important things.”
Better Rules to Solve Practical Problems
It has been known for some time among parties dealing with archiving, such as the National Archive, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and the National Library KB, that it is important to preserve digital heritage. It is also technically possible. However, in practice, they encounter obstacles. For example, they still need to obtain permission from all parties involved with a website, and they do not know where they stand legally.
To address this, Minister Moes wants to establish a good legal basis for this. Neighboring countries already have this, but the Netherlands does not yet. How this should be done is still unclear. A comprehensive report is available on which preparations for the legislative process will begin next year. Issues that need to be investigated include who is allowed to archive digital heritage and which sources are eligible and how to document that properly. It seems logical that at least websites ending in .nl should be included, but if you only consider those domain names, you miss domain names ending in .frl (Fryslân) or .amsterdam. Therefore, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate this and also weigh the costs, together with the previously mentioned parties.
How that legal basis will look is further researched and developed. The plan is for the improved legislation to be ready in four years. In the meantime, archival parties can continue web archiving on the current limited scale.
