5 ms·

Ordering Photocopies from Japan's National Library

86 points by msephton 3y ago

msephton 3y ago
Recently I have been looking for a specific issue of an old 1985 Japanese PC magazine, but there are non currently for sale, nor have there been any sold for some time judging by sold listings. Over the past several years what I would normally do in this scenario is play the waiting game and hope one pops up for sale and that I can win it. But this time I decided to play things a little different, after finding a detailed table of contents for the magazine at Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL) and seeing that they offered a remote duplication service. I thought I’d document this very useful, somewhat archaic, but thoroughly charming process.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Thanks. This was very informative. Would you mind telling us the magazine title? I'm just curious.
  - msephton 3y ago
    Sure! It was Monthly ASCII, 1985-11, No.101 https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3250694/1/1 https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3250694/1/1
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  If you want to help others in your exact situation, scan the scans and put them on the internet archive.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Wouldn't that qualify as copyright infringement...?
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      Yes, like much of IA's content it is. If the copyright holders object they can DMCA claim it.
      - msephton 3y ago
        I will do something alone those lines, and more, at some point in the future if/when I secure my own copy of the magazine.
      - nevermindiguess 3y ago
        You criminal. You knowingly support copyright infringement. You represent what is wrong with the world. I hope they put your dumb face on toilet paper in China and force you to go around file DMCA claims to take it down.
        dang 3y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned on HN, as it's completely against the rules. You've unfortunately been breaking them in other comments too. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended from now on? That means (among other things) no personal attacks, no name-calling, no flamewar, and so on. We want respectful, thoughtful, and above all curious conversation.
        msephton 3y ago
        You have no idea what you're talking about. You also have no idea how to reply to the correct comment on this website.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Interesting! I was really hoping to see the copies at the end, but realized you'd be violating the very copyright policy you had to obey to get them.
- Bedon292 3y ago
  Very interesting, but you left me wanting more information. What was so special about this magazine? And I assume one particular article, since you only needed 3 pages.
  - msephton 3y ago
    It was a feature describing a computer game written by a reader of the magazine. That makes it pretty much as old as Tetris. The source code listing was elsewhere in the magazine, so involved a separate request. I'm sure I'll blog about the specifics in future as that is a really interesting story in and of itself.
kayson 3y ago
How/why is it that their copyright law allows them to literally make a copy but not scan and send it?
- tivert 3y ago
  > How/why is it that their copyright law allows them to literally make a copy but not scan and send it? Total speculation: but maybe there's a narrow fair use exception that only applies to photocopies. Which makes a certain amount of sense: a photocopy suffers generation loss, but a digital scan can be infinitely duplicated perfectly.
  - leoc 3y ago
    Certainly such compulsory-licensing schemes for photocopying of books in libraries are not uncommon: the ALCS hands out the money from the UK's, for instance https://www.alcs.co.uk/where-the-money-comes-from https://www.alcs.co.uk/where-the-money-comes-from . Japan's scheme still not allowing the national library to share digital scans would certainly fit the conventional wisdom about that country being slow to embrace digitisation, but really the digital-lending-rights situation is probably a bin-fire everywhere, just not in quite the same way everywhere. And in fact I think Japanese law might be unusually generous (IANAL!) if it lets the national library copy an arbitrary number of magazine pages for anyone anywhere in the world.
  - sirn 3y ago
    Article 31 of Japan's copyright law (著作権法第31条) gives National Diet Library (and a few approved public libraries) a special exception which allows them to make a photocopy of a copyrighted material as long as it's "for researching purpose", "part of a work" (i.e., less than 50% of a book or an article), and "one copy per person".[1] IANAL, but I think it could be that a digital copy is no longer "one copy per person" as you can make unlimited copies from it, as well as sending it digitally is already making two copies between sender and receiver. [1]: https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html (Article 31)^1 ^1: Though this translation is slightly outdated, there were some revisions to copyright law in 2021, but this part is mostly unaffected.
nanoxide 3y ago
This is cool, I'm imagining the slight confusion of a Japanese librarian to scan three pages of an old computer magazine and ship it to the UK. Curious though, what's so interesting about the TOC to have it physically?
- Luc 3y ago
  The TOC is online, they used it to find the page range they're interested in.
  - msephton 3y ago
    That's correct!
Aloha 3y ago
This is possibly the most Japanese thing I can imagine - I both love and hate it at the same time.
- rippercushions 3y ago
  I'm only surprised there is no faxing involved. The trusting yet maximally awkward payment process where you get paper invoices and need to mail around links is super Japanese though.
  - msephton 3y ago
    There was an opportunity to fax during the payment process. I probably would have done so if I had an easy way to fax, just for kicks.
Jamie568 3y ago
[dead]
sampo 3y ago
Unrelated, but you can order prints of paintings from e.g. the US National Gallery of Art, and the UK National Gallery. https://customprints.nga.gov/ https://customprints.nga.gov/ https://shop.nationalgallery.org.uk/ https://shop.nationalgallery.org.uk/
- maxmouchet 3y ago
  Same for the National Library of France: https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en https://gallica-bnf-fr.translate.goog/blog/11122015/des-tirages-dart-chez-vous-en-quelques-clics?mode=desktop&_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://gallica-bnf-fr.translate.goog/blog/11122015/des-tira...
andyjohnson0 3y ago
Reminds me of being a student in the uk in the late eighties / early nineties and ordering stuff from the British Library document supply centre. First burrow into the microfiche indexes to find the full citations of the obscure stuff, then fill in the paper form, then wait a few weeks for the fat envelope of photocopies to arrive at the uni library. Definite need to plan ahead back then.

86 points by msephton 3y ago

Recently I have been looking for a specific issue of an old 1985 Japanese PC magazine, but there are non currently for sale, nor have there been any sold for some time judging by sold listings. Over the past several years what I would normally do in this scenario is play the waiting game and hope one pops up for sale and that I can win it. But this time I decided to play things a little different, after finding a detailed table of contents for the magazine at Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL) and seeing that they offered a remote duplication service. I thought I’d document this very useful, somewhat archaic, but thoroughly charming process.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Thanks. This was very informative. Would you mind telling us the magazine title? I'm just curious.
- msephton 3y ago
  Sure! It was Monthly ASCII, 1985-11, No.101 https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3250694/1/1 https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3250694/1/1
boomboomsubban 3y ago
If you want to help others in your exact situation, scan the scans and put them on the internet archive.
- toyg 3y ago
  Wouldn't that qualify as copyright infringement...?
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    Yes, like much of IA's content it is. If the copyright holders object they can DMCA claim it.
    - msephton 3y ago
      I will do something alone those lines, and more, at some point in the future if/when I secure my own copy of the magazine.
    - nevermindiguess 3y ago
      You criminal. You knowingly support copyright infringement. You represent what is wrong with the world. I hope they put your dumb face on toilet paper in China and force you to go around file DMCA claims to take it down.
      - dang 3y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned on HN, as it's completely against the rules. You've unfortunately been breaking them in other comments too. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended from now on? That means (among other things) no personal attacks, no name-calling, no flamewar, and so on. We want respectful, thoughtful, and above all curious conversation.
      - msephton 3y ago
        You have no idea what you're talking about. You also have no idea how to reply to the correct comment on this website.
plagiarist 3y ago
Interesting! I was really hoping to see the copies at the end, but realized you'd be violating the very copyright policy you had to obey to get them.
Bedon292 3y ago
Very interesting, but you left me wanting more information. What was so special about this magazine? And I assume one particular article, since you only needed 3 pages.
- msephton 3y ago
  It was a feature describing a computer game written by a reader of the magazine. That makes it pretty much as old as Tetris. The source code listing was elsewhere in the magazine, so involved a separate request. I'm sure I'll blog about the specifics in future as that is a really interesting story in and of itself.

kayson 3y ago

How/why is it that their copyright law allows them to literally make a copy but not scan and send it?

tivert 3y ago
> How/why is it that their copyright law allows them to literally make a copy but not scan and send it? Total speculation: but maybe there's a narrow fair use exception that only applies to photocopies. Which makes a certain amount of sense: a photocopy suffers generation loss, but a digital scan can be infinitely duplicated perfectly.
- leoc 3y ago
  Certainly such compulsory-licensing schemes for photocopying of books in libraries are not uncommon: the ALCS hands out the money from the UK's, for instance https://www.alcs.co.uk/where-the-money-comes-from https://www.alcs.co.uk/where-the-money-comes-from . Japan's scheme still not allowing the national library to share digital scans would certainly fit the conventional wisdom about that country being slow to embrace digitisation, but really the digital-lending-rights situation is probably a bin-fire everywhere, just not in quite the same way everywhere. And in fact I think Japanese law might be unusually generous (IANAL!) if it lets the national library copy an arbitrary number of magazine pages for anyone anywhere in the world.
- sirn 3y ago
  Article 31 of Japan's copyright law (著作権法第31条) gives National Diet Library (and a few approved public libraries) a special exception which allows them to make a photocopy of a copyrighted material as long as it's "for researching purpose", "part of a work" (i.e., less than 50% of a book or an article), and "one copy per person".[1] IANAL, but I think it could be that a digital copy is no longer "one copy per person" as you can make unlimited copies from it, as well as sending it digitally is already making two copies between sender and receiver. [1]: https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html (Article 31)^1 ^1: Though this translation is slightly outdated, there were some revisions to copyright law in 2021, but this part is mostly unaffected.

nanoxide 3y ago

This is cool, I'm imagining the slight confusion of a Japanese librarian to scan three pages of an old computer magazine and ship it to the UK. Curious though, what's so interesting about the TOC to have it physically?

Luc 3y ago
The TOC is online, they used it to find the page range they're interested in.
- msephton 3y ago
  That's correct!

Aloha 3y ago

This is possibly the most Japanese thing I can imagine - I both love and hate it at the same time.

rippercushions 3y ago
I'm only surprised there is no faxing involved. The trusting yet maximally awkward payment process where you get paper invoices and need to mail around links is super Japanese though.
- msephton 3y ago
  There was an opportunity to fax during the payment process. I probably would have done so if I had an easy way to fax, just for kicks.

Jamie568 3y ago

[dead]

sampo 3y ago

Unrelated, but you can order prints of paintings from e.g. the US National Gallery of Art, and the UK National Gallery. https://customprints.nga.gov/ https://customprints.nga.gov/ https://shop.nationalgallery.org.uk/ https://shop.nationalgallery.org.uk/

maxmouchet 3y ago
Same for the National Library of France: https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en https://gallica-bnf-fr.translate.goog/blog/11122015/des-tirages-dart-chez-vous-en-quelques-clics?mode=desktop&_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://gallica-bnf-fr.translate.goog/blog/11122015/des-tira...

andyjohnson0 3y ago

Reminds me of being a student in the uk in the late eighties / early nineties and ordering stuff from the British Library document supply centre. First burrow into the microfiche indexes to find the full citations of the obscure stuff, then fill in the paper form, then wait a few weeks for the fat envelope of photocopies to arrive at the uni library. Definite need to plan ahead back then.