Slashdot Mirror
E-Reserves Under Fire From Publishers
RackinFrackin writes "Publishers Weekly has a story about a copyright lawsuit lodged against several faculty members and a librarian at Georgia State University. The case, Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Patton et al., involves e-reserves, a practice of making electronic copies of articles available to students. From the article: 'Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles, create a single copy, and place that copy on a server where students can access it (and in some cases print, download, or share). Since the practice relies on fair use (creating a single digital copy, usually from a resource already paid for, for educational purposes), permission generally isn't sought, and thus permission fees aren't paid, making the price right for students strapped by the high cost of tuition and textbooks, as well as for libraries with budgets stretched thinner every year.'"
Sarcastically speaking, I feel so sorry for the publishers losing out. They charge such unnecessarily exhorbitant prices and change maybe a word or two or chapter organization resulting in a new edition to obsolete the old. Maybe it is high time professors fought back against this extortion.
Does an educational publishing house exist to disseminate information to the people who will use it to improve our society? Or does it merely gobble up the maximum amount of money without regard to the impact on society?
Well, I guess now we know.
The sign a lawyer will soon be there to sue you...
...is that textbook publishers are greedy bastards.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I just watched a very good and quite relevant TED talk by Lawrence Lessig, about fair use and the freedoms that are being eroded by excessive copyright legislation
I encourage you to watch it too, even though it's a bit long (20min).
Re-examining the remix
http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed.html
They are basically acting like a publisher. Compare to Basic Books v. Kinko's
My other sig is extremely clever...
Wouldn't it be better to have a book publisher sign a exclusive 2 year agreement to a specific university where only that school students can buy their books for 20% of the non subsidized price. Then add new features to the book like making it better than last years book by changing the title and making it a little smaller?
Each textbook will cost about $500,000 per copy. There will be a tacit agreement between professors/students of that copy to each chip in a little, buy one physical textbook, and within 2 hours every single student will have a copy if they bother to by downloading all-textbooks-ever.torrent.
I just graduated from a 4 year University, so I know what these reserves are like. They contain scanned, electronic copies of one or a few chapters of a book, which is usually required reading for some class you're in. I will attempt to demonstrate that they are covered by fair use.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
Definitely educational.
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
Usually books, already owned by the University's library. They could rent out the book to each person, one at a time, or just scan it and give it to everyone at the same time.
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
Usually one chapter. If it's the entire book, the instructor makes you buy a hard copy.
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
So, how many people would have bought the book, but didn't because it was available on reserve? Only the students have access, and if they were going to buy it already, then having access to a few chapters of it won't change their mind.
As if my education was not expensive enough, now they throw this out there. America is already rediculously expensive it seems for education, something like this will only make it more so. To make matters worse, I imagine we will be the only ones who pay attention and pay such fees if they come about - thus giving an even greater advantage to those recieving an education elsewhere.
Wouldn't it be great if the schools paid teachers to write their own book about the subject they Teach? The school could then reproduce the book to any student that attends the class, charge a extra fee off the top for tuition. Great schools with good teaching materials would come up to the top. Part of the Lit department could be in charge of producing the book. Make a school like a business for itself feeding off the uneducated souls of its students.
I think it's up to those of us who do "Information Technology" all day every day to educate people on why this is bad.
Ultimately they and their ilk would stop all uncontrolled dissemination of information for their own private profits. That would be bad for all of humanity, and must be successfully opposed.
It probably will cost some people their jobs in the process. I understand that and I still say it should be done anyway.
I'm pretty sure the future which includes greater human education and knowledge will provide more and better jobs, though.
expandfairuse.org
Since the practice relies on fair use (creating a single digital copy, usually from a resource already paid for, for educational purposes)
Please stop acting as if there's a hard and fast rule for what is and what is not fair use. There isn't, and pretending otherwise is deliberate ignorance. Fair use is determined by putting all the facts in a pot and stirring them around, and the facts are different every single time. Here's the actual law: link, which says you can't know whether the use is fair until you stir at least four mandatory ingredients into the stew.
Creating a single copy of a work is not fair use by itself. Making a back-up is not a fair use by itself. Educational use is not fair use by itself (why do you think schools still buy textbooks?). Even the combination of these doesn't take into account potential market impact.
For the love of all that's holy, please please please put this misconception to bed.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
(barbie voice): Math is expensive!
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
I did RTA, and I didn't see the name of the E-Reserves product Georgia is using, but I am betting it is the same one they sort-of open sourced a few years ago, and that I am currently maintaining at my own institution. I am in the middle of building a new E-reserves system because the one that Georgia State created is in a bit of a need of a rewrite in order to work on newer versions of PHP.
This is a big deal. Institutions often pay incredible amounts of money to provide library catalog services, and reserves are a huge part of any course system. Instructors often bring stuff into our library, from their own collection -- a magazine article, a couple of photos, whatever -- and now, more than ever, they exist only in electronic form (videos, PDF files, etc). You have to put these things some place.
This stuff needs to be worked out. I see a few people already posting about how expensive college is... the last thing I'd want to see is the costs of license fees for copyright being passed on to students. That's seriously suck.
Screw Cambridge University Press. I just lost my assitantship(read: tuition waiver) because we don't have enough funding in my department. If we had to pay even to read every single copy of an article, most of the graduate departments would be gone. In any case, how is this any different from making copies out of a physical book in a library? If they are going to go after us, they should be going after every single library that holds their books and also owns a copier, since apparently that is costing them fees as well. Where they say "Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles", they really mean "Rather than BUY multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles". Oh, yeah, and remind me never to publish with Cambridge University Press.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Amendment 28 : The right of a corporation to earn the same or more profits as last year shall not be infringed by congress or reality.
This sentence no verb.
Well, it's a quandary. Publishers want to sell books. Academics and students want to use those books for free, and with a volume of use that would make ever purchasing the book unnecessary for all but a handful of them. I'm sure this will seem a reasonable position to some folks here, but I think it's clear which side is asking for the moon. Incidentally, if you RTFA it's clear Georgia State was operating well beyond what might be considered "fair use" (which Georgia State more or less admitted by tightening its policies after the lawsuit was filed).
No statement is true, not even this one.
America is already rediculously expensive it seems for education, something like this will only make it more so.
I wonder if this will drive more American students to other countries for higher ed (Canada, Europe...)?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"E-Reserves" in dangr? Must I now cut back on utilization of a particularly common glyph in Anglican writing? If too much unthoughtful inclusion of this glyph occurs, will total lack of futur supply occur? How can communication work with such a handicap? Can you and I sumday go back to normal utilization of this glyph without killing its supply?
Bow-ties are cool.
I'd agree with you, but your forced use of fixed-width font distracted me enough to want to complain about that instead. :P
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Open source all course materials and stop fucking around with for-profit publishers.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...permission fees aren't paid, making the price right for students strapped by the high cost of tuition and textbooks...
What the author meant to say was:
"permission fees aren't paid, allowing the parents of students to spend a higher portion of educational fees on tuition and textbooks."
ie: this isn't going to do anything for students bottom line/costs.... as any student would believe that a institutional cost savings would be passed directly to them... as if.
Yes, the school may have violated the journals copyright, but an academic journal does not actually do any work, none, zilch, zero. All the work is done by authors, editors and referees who are paid by universities. And therefore the publisher will ultimately lose.
All universities should immediately cancel all journals subscripts to Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications. Academics and students will easily obtain all the articles from either free preprint servers or by writing the article author, while the publisher has now made legit possession toxic.
All academics should apply pressure on their libraries to cancel subscriptions to these journals.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Publishers know one thing: don't fuck with tenured professors. These guys have contributed a lot of material (both as articles and as books) to the publishers, from which they gain usually very little to nothing. But the profs have the attitude that they'll send a copy of the article to any scholar that asks for it. Some even have automated e-mail systems which send the article in an automated e-mail. And publishers always let them do that, because they know what is the true source of their bread and butter, and know better than piss them off. Ask any tenured prof if they are worried that the publishing hose will come after them for distributing copies of their articles; their attitude is "Bring it on, make my day."
Senior scientists HATE giving up copyrights to the text and every picture they publish in the article, to the journal, without getting anything in return - not to mention that they are the authors of the whole article, and must even carefully format it according to the capricious guidelines of the journal! Oh yeah, and the peer-review is done by other unpaid scientists. People are furious and anger is boiling. Does this publishing house really want to stir this nest of angry wasps? The UC boycott of NPG didn't come out from a vacuum. Cambridge University Press could find itself on the receiving end of something similarly unpleasant. Yes, they are very prestigious and with a long tradition - but so does Nature Publishing Group.
If the situation blows up to a sufficient degree, we might see a revolutionary change towards copylefted, openly accessible scientific papers and notebooks. Public Library of Science is moving in that direction, and I can only hope that the movement/trend picks up momentum and steamrolls the greedy publishing houses and journals.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Publishers want to sell books.
Publisher want to rent books.
Think pay-per-view, or rather pay-per-read.
Well, there goes my ability to save my students trips to the reserve room. Like many others, I slap things on Blackboard (POS) or other CMS. Now that'll no doubt be prohibited. And here's the comparison. I had to sign away the rights to my dissertation in order to graduate. Why? Digitizing. Oh sweet irony! The library has a corp come in to do the digitizing of dissertations. That costs, so the library signed a deal where the corp gets the right to disseminate the material with little or no money coming back to me or the school. They digitize my work and then get to sell it to others for to cover their costs. Forever. If I become well-known, and my work becomes valuable (I should be so lucky!), they'll have my work to peddle in perpetuity. What's the point of comparison? The sore feeling in my bottom, and your bottom, and the bottoms of students and faculty across the nation.
If the school isn't making a profit selling the right to read the articles, they ought to be in the clear. The basic argument of the publishers here is that what schools are doing is the equivalent of making multiple copies of an article for classroom use. Guess what; the 1976 US Copyright act specifically identifies "multiple copies for classroom use" as fair use. Beyond that, I'm assuming the school has already paid the publisher for the electronic copies of these articles through a database that students already have access to. The publishers aren't bitching that they aren't getting paid here; they are bitching that they aren't getting paid twice.
Anyone have a mirror?
DEATH TO PUBLISHERS
All relevent and important things to note. The University of Georgia had been previously approached about their actions and ignored all attempts at dialogue. There is a system in place that regulates the activity, permitting it within specific guidelines, that the university ignored. There was a huge amount of copyrghted information sloshing around the system such that 600 courses and 6700 portions of texts were unregulated. Both the Oxford and Cambridge presses, who are both included in the action, direct their profits to the universities in question and therefore relieve the pressure on British taxpayers.
While the practises of certain academic publishers are worthy of scorn this case is more complicated than people are admitting. You may hate the system but allowing the debate to be so coloured with hyperbole does no-one any good. The University of Georgia willingly and deliberatly ignored the presses and their interests. There is a clear and obvious harm done. There is a clear and obvious benefit as a result of their actions. Whether those two balance is the question we should be considering.
I don't know about other schools but at mine when you're looking at "reserves" it actually relates back to a physical copy or license the library has a right to. If you check out a reserve then that drops the availability of "free units" down 1.
anything i ever made or wrote so far can be copied freely as long as no one else makes money from it, if they do, i'd want my share. That would be a nice manifesto to rub in the major companies faces and solve a lot of shit
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
sohbet
sohbet odalar
sohbet odas
chat odas
cinsel sohbet
Looks like it's time again...
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Robert A Heinlein "Lifeline" 1929
Georgia State did several things that are atypical of other universities' e-reserves systems. They made PDF's available to anyone, rather than requiring student authentication, and rather than tying that authentication to allow access to only courses the students registered for. Also, they retained the copies online after the courses had concluded.