One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
That’s going to be very difficult to achieve. Anything below the Berne convention is a legal impossibility.
What I think should happen, is that digital preservation should become a recognized fair use.
For example, digital content should be offered without DRM and at minimum price to recognized libraries for archival purposes.
If this is not done, the libraries may break the DRM themselves.
As soon as the copyright holder stops offering the content at reasonable prices to the public, the libraries are free to lend out the DRM-free content to the public.
And when the copyright term expires and the works enter the public domain, the libraries may immediately offer the DRM-free copies to the public.
The advantage of such a scheme is that it only requires one country to legally mandate it. And that country will not be in violation of the Berne convention or other treaties.