Colleges Shouldn’t Have to Deal With Copyright Monitoring by Pamela Samuelson.
From the post:
Colleges have a big stake in the outcome of the lawsuit that three publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications, brought against Georgia State University officials for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, now in its eighth year, challenged GSU’s policy that allowed faculty members to upload excerpts (mainly chapters) of in-copyright books for students to read and download from online course repositories.
Four years ago, a trial court held that 70 of the 75 challenged uses were fair uses. Two years ago, an appellate court sent the case back for a reassessment under a revised fair-use standard. The trial court has just recently ruled that of the 48 claims remaining in the case, only four uses, each involving multiple chapters, infringed. The question now is, What should be the remedy for those four infringements?
Sage was the only publisher that prevailed at all, and it lost more infringement claims than it won. Cambridge and Oxford came away empty-handed. Despite the narrowness of Sage’s win, all three publishers have asked the court for a permanent injunction that would impose many new duties on GSU and require close monitoring of all faculty uploads to online course repositories.
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I expected better out of Cambridge and Oxford, especially Cambridge, which has in recent years allowed free electronic access to some printed textbooks.
Sage and the losing publishers, Cambridge and Oxford, seek to chill the exercise of fair use by not only Georgia State University but universities everywhere.
Pamela details the outrageous nature of the demands made by the publishers and concludes that she is rooting for GSU on appeal.
We should all root for GSU on appeal but that seems so unsatisfying.
It does nothing to darken the day for the broods of copyright vipers at Cambridge, Oxford or Sage.
In addition to creating this money pit for their publishers, the copyright vipers want to pad their nests by:
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As if that were not enough, the publishers want the court to require GSU to provide them with access to the university’s online course system and to relevant records so the publishers could confirm that the university had complied with the record-keeping and monitoring obligations. The publishers have asked the court to retain jurisdiction so that they could later ask it to reopen and modify the court order concerning GSU compliance measures.
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I don’t know how familiar you are with academic publishing but every academic publisher has a copyright department that shares physical space with acquisitions and publishing.
Whereas acquisitions and publishing are concerned with collection and dissemination of knowledge, while recovering enough profit to remain viable, the copyright department could just as well by employed by Screw.
Expanding the employment rolls of copyright departments to monitor fair use by publishers is another drain on their respective publishers.
If you need proof of copyright departments being a dead loss for their publishers, consider the most recent annual reports for Cambridge and Oxford.
Does either one highlight their copyright departments as centers of exciting development and income? Do they tout this eight year long battle against fair use?
No? I didn’t think so but wanted your confirmation to be sure.
I can point you to a history of Sage, but as a privately held publisher, it has no public annual report. Even that history, over changing economic times in publishing, finds no space to extol its copyright vipers and their role in the GSU case.
Beyond rooting for GSU, work with the acquisitions and publication departments at Cambridge, Oxford and Sage, to help improve their bottom line profit and drown their respective broods of copyright vipers.
How?
Before you sign a publishing agreement, ask your publisher for a verified statement of the ROI contributed by their copyright office.
If enough of us ask, the question will resonant across the academic publishing community.