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.'"

Comments

Relevant TED Talk

[slifox]

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

Re:Textbook Publishers

[twidarkling]

Can it really be true that he had no say in it? I mean, not directly in normal circumstances, but the copyright belonged to him, right? Was it legal for him to tell you to copy it? If so, couldn't he have put that on the first page?

I'm not nitpicking, I'm actually curious how all that shit happens.

If it's anything like the University Press that I worked for, no, he couldn't put it on the first page, there's a standard copyright assertion/disclaimer that the place will use. No, it probably wasn't *strictly* legal for him to be saying that, and technically, it's not his copyright.

That's right. It's not his copyright. The entire point of the contract that an author and publisher sign is a temporary assignment of copyright for specific purposes, generally the publisher holds it for the first run, and maybe some subsequent reprints, until the book is declared out of print, and then the copyright reverts to the author.

This is pretty much necessary under current business practices, since deals for advertising, excerpting, and even designing and printing would all be kneecapped by having to return to the author constantly for written approval for every change and deal made. And since I've seen authors go incommunicado for literally months at a time, publishing would grind to a halt.

eBooks will have to change the formula slightly, since the book will never need to technically go out of print, so it'll probably see a move to term-periods of copyright assignment. Say, a publisher gets it for 5 years or some such before reversion.

As for if one publisher refused, another be willing? Not as likely as you think. Publishers in a field tend to talk to each other a lot, and find out things, and keep tabs on each other, and very few are willing to take on something that's going to be a clear loss in publishing, which with an author looking to give the book away, would probably do it. You'd be stuck doing self-publishing, and even for people who are subject matter experts, self-published books are a damn nightmare. Typos and awkward phrasing slip through, organization is horrible, there's usually no fact checking and source attribution checking, all because the person assumes they know the topic that well, and mistakes happen.

A large, heavily illustrated book costs about $20 to get printed at a professional printer if you do a print run of 1,000+. It's not the printing that costs the money, it's the original research, follow-up research, and editing that cost the money. The advanced-level Ukrainian language text book that my Press printed took the author five years of in-class and at-home work to create before she ever brought it to us, and then it took nearly another two years to get it printed. It's also the stuff that no one ever thinks of that costs the big money too. The book had hundreds of images that had to be converted to print quality, some starting out as crappy web images, some as massive posters. That all needs to be done out-of-house usually too.

Textbooks are fucking expensive to make, and the biggest bandits are usually the college bookstores to boot, especially when they buy back and resell used copies. If you're in a college town, check independent bookstores in your area. If you have the ISBN, you can usually get them to order it in (as far as I know, every University Press has a deal with at least one distributor, and most textbook publishers do too), and it'll usually be cheaper. Amazon is also a good bet, though shipping can be an issue.