Clarification from Sweden on OCLC negotiations

The National Library of Sweden has issued a short blog post clarifying their objections to the WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities (WCRR) policy. The inability of the two parties to reconcile these issues led the library to break off contract negotiations with OCLC. I find the Library's objections to be logical and undeniable:

1. The relationship with OCLC around record use is asymmetrical, with OCLC having the right to do whatever it wishes with the records while library use is restricted by the policy.

2. The policy actually requires libraries to favor WorldCat over other services, and thus hinder competition, which is not appropriate for a national library. [kc: This may even be illegal for publicly funded libraries in the US.]

3.  Open data is of strategic importance for libraries.

They conclude with:

To this end we urge OCLC to allow members to treat downloaded records as their own, including releasing them under any open license such as CC0. We feel that this would strengthen rather than diminish OCLCs strong status as a service provider to the library community.