British Library Declines Taliban Archive

摘要

The British Library (BL) has turned down a large archive of Taliban-related material owing to issues of copyright compliance and concerns on the library's part that, by hosting the collection, it could be in violation of counterterrorism laws. On August 28, the BL released a statement explaining that it would neither acquire nor provide access to the digital archive of materials from the Taliban Sources Project (TSP). The collection includes newspapers and magazines published between 1996 and 2001, when the Taliban was the ruling power in Afghanistan, as well as volumes of Sharia law and edicts, military documents, maps, transcripts of radio broadcasts, poetry written by Taliban soldiers, and video and audiotapes.