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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.'"
They are basically acting like a publisher. Compare to Basic Books v. Kinko's
My other sig is extremely clever...
Then there's the cost. Why do much? Yet, graze in the computer programming section of any book store and you'll see up to date books that are less than $50.
But let's go back to business. There are Schaum Outline's for just about every topic and they cover every thing that's in a textbook for less than $20. It's the same with the first couple of years of science and engineering, math, english, economics, etc...
Why aren't they used?
In my school career, there were only 2 professors that used their own book and one of them just had us get a Kinko's version of his book at cost.
College costs are getting to the point where an average kid can't afford it. And no, borrowing money to pay for school doesn't count as affording it.Textbooks just add to the burden.
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July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
You are, however, ignoring one problem on the other end. Copyright infringement is so cheap that it's not easy for publishers to compete, even if they were to price it "fairly". The iTunes Music Store is a successful example, but it was selling most of its songs at US$0.99 or so, which is cheap enough to make piracy seem like too much trouble. A textbook, even when reasonably priced, is not likely ever to be priced at a trivial sum.
I think the bigger problem is that each textbook in question is a little monopoly in the class you have to attend, which allows the publisher of that textbook to charge high prices. If courses were required to designate at least two or three textbooks from different publishers as "official", then we might see some price competition. Or, if professors were banned from unnecessarily requiring the newest edition, competition from earlier editions would serve a similar role in the market.
Outside of some areas of government work and a handful of tightly-regulated industries, "clear conflicts of interest" aren't illegal, and are, in fact, fairly common. Certain conflicts of interest may, while not illegal in and of themselves, be prohibted by particular contracts (particularly employment contracts), but most aren't even there (for instance, its a pretty clear conflict of interest to work for one company and to own stock in a competitor -- if its voting stock, there is a double conflict of interest -- but except in the case of an executive-level employee, this would rarely be prohibited.)
I doubt that professors make very much money on the books they sell.
The most expensive book I ever purchased was a DSP optimization textbook, written by the prof that taught the course. It was $106. He claimed that he got very little income out of it, and that it was $106 because of the small batch size that was published (and, really, how many people are going to buy a senior/graduate-level DSP optimization textbook?)
"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."
They should be, but they already did that years ago. In most (all?) cases university libraries with photocopiers already have agreements with some kind of copyright pool that they pay into for the rights to allow students to make copies of journal articles and other materials. In other words, the publishers are already getting paid for the original material on the shelves and for any paper copies made. Apparently they want more, or they want the same sort of deal for electronic copies. In principle, I see nothing wrong with that. If they hold copyright on the material then they should have some ability to control it, and a deal to buy a journal does not necessarily grant license to make as many copies as people would like without paying something additional. In practice, however, the prices charged for many journals are so ridiculous that I don't have a great deal of sympathy, and it's not as if students are making paper copies in order to distribute them and thereby cut into the publishers' revenue. In general students are making paper copies so they don't have to read the journal in the library -- they can take the copy with them. It's a convenience factor that still means the library has to buy the journal, so the publishers' revenue stream should be fine. All the publishers are doing is trying to gouge for more money.
In the digital age some of these issues become more murky, because it is so much easier to copy and share a digital journal article, but libraries still have to pay for subscriptions to those journals, and why should it matter if a bunch of articles are collected together in one spot for students at the relevant university to download directly as long as the library is subscribed to that journal or publication? Alternatively, you tell the students to go get the article themselves and they download it directly from the publisher's site 100 times. What's the big deal?
I know publishers want to protect their revenue stream, but if they are too fussy about how they do it then profs are going to move in increasing numbers to the obvious solution: screw publishers. Profs will make and distribute the stuff themselves at the university, and then publishers will all wish they had been more accommodating.
The whole %0.5 of it, or whatever it is? Unlikely.
My University had a God-like math professor who wrote many texts. He encouraged students to buy the book, photocopy it, and return it. He said he barely got anything for them, and he would rather have the students in his class to have the book and be able to follow along in the lecture. "$150 is just stupid, I have no say in it."
People always say this but I'm now a phd student and the only time I ever had a class where we used a professor's book was one class where the book was actually out of print so he just gave us photocopies of it. What subjects are people taking where this is happening?
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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.