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Academic Publishers Ask The Impossible In GSU Copyright Suit
Nidi62 writes "A Duke University blog covers the possible ramifications of a motion in the copyright case against Georgia State University. Cambrigde, Oxford, and Sage have proposed an injunction that would first enjoin GSU to include all faculty, employees, students. All copying would have to be monitored and limited to 10% of a work or 1000 words, whichever is less. No two classes would be allowed to use the same copied work unless they paid for it, essentially taking fair use out of the classroom. Along with this, courses would be allowed to be made up of only 10% copied material, the other 90% must be either purchased works or copies that have been paid for by permission fees. And, if this isn't enough, the publishers also want access to all computer systems on the campus network, to monitor compliance and copying. 'This proposed order, in short, represents a nightmare, a true dystopia, for higher education....Yet you can be sure that if [these] things happen, all of our campuses would be pressured to adopt the "Georgia State model" in order to avoid litigation.' Disclosure: I am currently a graduate student at Georgia State University."
Before Slashdot goes into immediate outrage mode (although, by noting this, I might already be too late) over this, please note one very important thing:
This is a PROPOSED INJUNCTION BY THE PLAINTIFFS .
In our adversarial judicial system, plaintiffs will try to ask the court for as much relief as they can get away with. The courts will either accept it, accept part of it or laugh it out of court. However, merely a request for this amount of relief has zero effect on the law whatsoever. If I was injured in a minor car accident with you, I'd be well within my rights to ask the court for a billion dollars in compensation and relief. However, this doesn't mean the court will give it to me, nor does it have any real implications beyond the fact that I might come off sounding like a litigious dick.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Please, do some original research rather than relying on copying things that other people have already done. Copying established research is the Chinese way of doing things. If we ever hope to lead in this world again, we need to train our students to be creative and original.
I guess I have a skewed perspective, being that I have really only experienced science classes (or lower division non-science classes). But in almost all of these, there is very little copied material. Things are taught out of a book (or books) that the students are responsible for acquiring access to. While the students may obtain copies on their own, the professor would never disseminate them.
Are things different in other fields? Are there areas where classes are taught primarily from copied materials? If so, why is this done, instead of just picking a selection of books? Is it that there are no adequate books? If so, then why don't people write them?
Sorry for all the questions. As I said above, I am pretty ignorant on this topic.
"...the publishers also want access to all computer systems on the campus network, to monitor compliance and copying."
Okay so the publishers are going to hire a small army of people to enforce this monitoring provision? Sounds like that cost will outweigh any losses incurred from anyone copying more than 10% of their material.
Sounds pretty stupid to me.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
...and publish them under GPL. That's the solution.
Wow. Can you tell me what meds you were on when you posted that? I'd like to see if I can score some when I just want to sail away.
The value of a college degree is not rising as fast as the cost of obtaining one. This kind of crap doesn't help matters.
It has amazed me how long the current academic publishing regime has lasted. This dystopian fantasy by the publishers is the logical extension of a broken business model, where the publishers provide essentially zero value yet charge enormous fees. GA Tech should use this moment as a clean break point, and demand that all campus materials be either in the public domain or be available under Creative Commons license. Award tenure based only on publications which are under CC license.
Universities need to remember that they are the folks that generate *all* the content that publishers want to use against them. They can stop giving it away to these guys any time they like. In this era of global networking, there is essentially no added value in distribution, warehousing, and organizing papers into journals. Publishers need to be reminded of this fact.
Congress should pass clarifying legislation on fair use, formally codifying into law what is and isn't. Then Congress should let a nationalistic streak run crazy for a little while by passing a defunding bill which defunds all US education programs done in cooperation with British universities in retaliation. Cut the fuckers off at the knees.
(Cue the self-righteous whiners who will say "buh buhhh we push policies on other countries." It's called looking out for your national interests, morons. Up until recently, it was the very reason we constituted a federal government...)
And since when do we just allow private entities snooping privileges on computer networks? (Wait... there's that whole internet thing... never mind.) But the closed GSU network is not the internet. I would be surprised if this was granted, and you're absolutely correct... this would cost the publishers a fortune, but if anyone's priced textbooks recently, you would think the bastards could afford it. :)
While you may be technically right on
merely a request for this amount of relief has zero effect on the law whatsoever
...it does have an effect on me. I'm genuinely outraged and feel the strong urge to punch one or two of those bottom-feeders and they lawyers in the face.
I'd very much hope Academia threw that slime out, but by watching reality I fear that many decision-makers within Academia are corrupt themselves and guests in this disgusting party.
Often times, our professors would hand out maybe one or 2 chapters of a book in printed form, to keep students from having to pay for the whole book.
if that is what's considered acceptable practice at GSU, then yes: it sound sound like copyright violations. From my perspective, "fair use" means quoting a soundbite-sized portion - maybe a conclusion or a few sentences that support a proposition. It definitely should NOT cover giving students enough material that they don't have to buy textbooks. I do think the monitoring proposals sound a little extreme, but if large-scale copying is rampant at that university, then something needs to be done to stop it - and to ensure it IS stopped.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
... US education system wasn't fucked up enough
This would inevitably happen when ownership moved into thought space.
and no - there is no limit, line, format you can define that will prevent such things from happening - 'rights holders' will eventually push their 'rights' onto you, with THEIR interpretations over and over. it will just end up as an 'interpretation battle' in between 'the people' (me, you all of us) and those who jumped on the 'intellectual property/copyright' bandwagon.
Read radical news here
this is 'just' a 'proposed injunction by plaintiffs' somewhere in some state, another is just another thing by some other party in other state, something else is 'just' something else someplace else.
one needs to be a moron in order not to realize that these kind of 'just this, that' things are on the increase, and even worse ones are up, and these will eventually become the norm at this rate. because, 'somewhere', 'someone' will manage to make 'something' fly, and from that point on it will be repeated everywhere else, and others will push the boundaries constantly from that new frontier.
Read radical news here
What the hell is "Cambrigde"?
Students seem to pay about 10% extra more then their tuition on books, which are required for the classes. Colleges are actually one the key reason why the publishing companies stay alive. If you push them too hard they just might realize for most of the classes those required books are not required, and that 75% of their student who purchase these books actually crack them open 4 times a semester (unless there are problems to solve in them)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
will the FSF guys be arrested for sex crimes too?
We can only hope!
Why would the publishers want to pay for it when they could just put in the judgement that the university has to?
Cambridge University Press is doing this? I'm a student of the university it's supposed to be the publishing wing of and I find this ridiculous folly inexcusable.
As far as I know, they are also under the control of a committee of academics from the university itself. Given that those certainly ought to understand what those demands entail for day-to-day academic work, it really makes me wonder just what they were thinking, or if the brain rot from working in the IP-peddling industry really can be that drastic... anyhow, if this piece of news makes the rounds, I'm sure there will be at least a bit of internal upheaval about the decision to field such a proposal.
You mean you never violate copyright law currently, not even a teensy, teensy, little tiny bit? WOW! How do you manage? Can I have your autograph?
I hate to tell you, but you probably violate copyright law several times a day, totally without being aware of it (with each violation potentially opening you up to damages of up to $150k in the US). Yes, copyright law is that f***ed-up....
Actually, your post reveals that you already violate copyright law, as you are knowledgeably encouraging a third party (your students) to infringe on the academic journals' copyrights by accessing the freely available materials for your course. Or did you mean "I would continue to freely violate"? Anyway, personally, I can only commend you for it. The more civil disobedience there is against the insanity of current copyright law, the better. Only in this way is there even a smidgen of a chance that the law will be reformed.
The original post does not give enough information to understand the substance of this case. I have a masters degree from GSU so it perked my interest to understand better what this case is about. The case appears to center around a practice by some professors at GSU that use an E-reservation system to make certain papers available to students. When I was a grad student at GSU the professors simply copied the Harvard review documents or other documents and handed them out to us. Apparently this case has been filed due to the creation of a more formal, flexible process "and takes its name from the traditional library "reserve" model, where a professor makes a limited number of physical copies of articles or a book chapter available for students. Those copies were generally subject to permission, and proper reproduction fees were paid to the publishers." Below is more information.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/43500-a-failure-to-communicate.html
You will use a computer which is incapable of doing any thing else but watch movies and surf the net(ARM processor/ATOM).
You will use storage medium which will fail in about two years(Flash Drives), so your more likely to store your files off line in some Cloud(B.S).
Even though fiber-optics has un limited bandwith, we will keep charging you more for less.
You will have a fear that your computer is under attack, so you'll install monitoring software so we can see all the files on your computer.
You will let us know all the software and files that are on your computer, if we do not want you to have them we will delete them, and not allow them to traverse the net.
You will only buy computers which are capible of bricking(INTEL & McFee) themselves if we notice that you tried to store some file which we deem as being unpaid for.
but dont tell any one, it our secret.
Our education model has always followed our scientific model, where you share your work. Time to stop letting publishers publish (read: own) our text books. Time for the professors and institutions to own (read: share) the copyright. Problem solved. Now...who needs that cancer cure?
In Ray Bradbury's classic Sci-Fi novel, books were outlawed, and forced people to memorize great works of literature, because the only way to carry a book was in your head.
So vagrants would gather in secluded areas, and "copy" the books by teaching a younger generation each book, verbally.
This is direction we are headed, not by the government outlawing books, but by corporations and IP holders making the ownership of books so ridden with copyright hassles that our only recourse may be to memorize a book and verbally pass on the knowledge, since anything else is considered "theft".
Of course, it won't be long before *READING* a book is considered copyright theft since you are copying the book from the printed page to your brain.
Oh what a world we are making for ourselves. When learning is outlawed, only outlaws will learn.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I thought academia was all about freely sharing knowledge for the betterment of Mankind.
/hopelessly naieve
Why are they even supporting these greedy publishers of textbooks and journals? It's the 21st century people, time to dump the middlemen.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Music departments have to pay for EVERY copy of music. I'm not saying that's right, fair, or whatever. But why is the music department not allowed to copy, but the biology department can hand out wholesale copies of scientific journals. Not saying I agree or not, but... It's a strong argument for a plaintiff.
Now, here is what I agree on. How the #&$! are schools going to copy, but then have tough as nails plagiarism policies? Hypocrites much? What kind of message does that send to students? And before you say that plagiarism is about claiming and citing properly, it's really the fact of using something that is not yours. Most colleges I know limit papers to only 10-20% of their content being from an outside source, even if it is properly cited. But, WTF do I know... the last class I took was auditing the Harvard's Ethics/Philosophy course of Michael Sandel's 'Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?'... And I walked away thinking that academics would have taken an Ethics course at some point too.
FTA: TLDR
I8-D
Are you listening?
Plastics.
Please, people, stop with these "disclosure/disclaimer: I know somebody who walked by ...." lines. You're hardly disclosing anything in the way said statement is intended to be used.
*/rant*
Seems to me that the underlying problem here is that the instructors want to use a chapter here and a chapter there from lots of different books. Then why not get the publisher to print partial copies? Or, is it because even though photocopying or local printing (gahh, with an inkjet printer, probably) is more expensive than printing on a printing press, it distributes the cost into lots of little pieces over many people, so it's not so noticeable that the instructor has essentially specified $1000 worth of material. Seems that the department chair might want to publish guidelines of what's a reasonable expectation for students, eh? Or that the consumer (the instructors) aren't demanding better quality from the publishers (i.e. a book with ALL the usable stuff in it). When I was a child, my father was a EE professor and got review copies of textbooks, I remember going through them. There was wide variability in completeness and pedagogical style (and since a lot of those books are still in boxes in the garage, where they get rummaged through every few years, my opinion hasn't changed). Just don't specify/buy the lousy books and give the feedback to the publishers about the shortcomings. That's why they have editors, after all.
Yes, in the social sciences where "opinion" and "interpretation" have a lot more scope (after all, we all pretty much agree on Maxwell's equations, so the only differences are in presentation style, rather than content), but even there, I would think that there are avenues for compilations by a publisher. Or is the instructor so paramount that "you must follow my lead, because only *I* have the revealed knowledge of truth, liberty, and ..."
As for "I must have copies to do my research".. A get off the grass comment... Back in the 70s, when *I* was in school, we had to go to the library and take notes on the journal article, or, maybe, be able to check out the bound year's worth of journals and take it back to the dorms, where I could take notes. Sure, it's nice to have hundreds of papers as pdf on my iPad, but it's not essential.
That lobbyists are trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill with the whole copyright thing. I definitely believe in the right for an author to protect his or her works but it has gone to far. We are creating legislation that is stifling creativity and making people fearful of being sued for creating works of their own. In the end, our society is continuing to contribute to its own demise a la Ancient Rome. Not only has the United States mostly outsourced innovation, we've practically made it illegal through copyright, patent-abuse, and other forms of IP protection. How can the United States become a global leader if we are more concerned about suing for profit? I blame politicians for being greedy and shortsighted. They want their personal wealth and power and be damned what adverse effects result. Most of this huge deal over copyright and IP results from fabricated studies by lobby groups in attempt to "recoup perceived lost profit." Textbook companies charge an arm and a leg over something that costs a mere fraction to produce. The time is ripe for a change and a big change in the way business is done in the US or we will find our children living in third-world, service economy.
Fair use explicitly includes the possibility of multiple copies for classroom use in the context of teaching.
The point of copyright is not making people pay for things, it is public benefit. We tend to forget that, but in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, SCOTUS put it well: "The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.”
"Multiple copies for classroom use" is not license for copy shops to duplicate textbooks next to campus, or even course packets. But if as a professor or teaching assistant, I want to photocopy a chapter from a seminal text for my class of 20 students, I am well within my rights.
Hell, there are some books that aren't even in print anymore... used copies are not only outrageously expensive, there simple aren't enough to go around. Sure, I can place it on two hour reserve at the library... or, I can use the Xerox machine in the manner in which it was intended.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You seem a bit confused here. Plagiarism and copying are two completely different acts, with completely different consequences. The only common atribute to them is probably that both are illegal.
Rethinking email
paging Ted Nelson, Ted Nelson please pick up the yellow courtesy phone in the lobby of failed ideas...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The cost will simply be passed onto the universities.
It's not what meds he's on, it's what meds he needs. I used to think he was a steganographic 'bot using /. as a covert channel, but I'm also coming around to the schizophrenia idea.
Seriously.... and the worse thing is that if this is tried often enough, eventually some imbecile will hammer it on, making it a precedent
From Right to Read by Richard M. Stallman
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow
another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for
many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school
that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each
book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch
reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as
computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a
middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He
understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (Ten percent of those fees went to the researchers who
wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in
enough to repay this loan.)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Hurray! The more trouble and discontent that gets stirred up revolving excessive copyrights the better. Who knows, maybe in the next election or two, copyrights, DRM, broadcast flags, digital locks, etc. may be part of the televised debate...
It's tedious, not impossible. I hope this does get pushed through so an example can be made out of how unrealistic this is to abide by for society at large. If you can't even do it in a school, how can anyone else be expected to do it?
If I were the University, my counter proposal would be "We'll pay some small amount for past damages, and our employees will no longer buy, use, or copy books from these publishers. We are not in control of or responsible for the behavior of our students, so they will have to be treated individually."
With the exception of modern literature and law, you can probably find enough material online to teach just about any course at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level (in my experience), the textbook is usually lecture notes written by the professor, and the professor usually makes them available online.
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courses would be allowed to be made up of only 10% copied material, the other 90% must be either purchased works or copies that have been paid for by permission fees.
So 0% public domain and 0% free/libre? Doesn't sound like they're taking advantage of those types of resources.
US as a cast-culture.
If you cannot afford education, then you must wear a black tattoo in the center of your forehead.
If you can afford Ivy-Education, then you must wear a white tattoo in the center of your forehead.
The USA is more and more black and white.
It is no surprise when African-Americans know they earned a white tattoo.
It is no surprise European-Americans are clueless that they received a black tattoo at birth.
Separate but equal is a cultural tradition for US.
Dogma affected never reason effective %~P.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
It is past time for an open source curriculum.
Your Physics stuff rocks. At least imho it does!
Unrealistic expectations. Since when do copyright enforcers know anything about higher education?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
A tenth
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
how sad is it?
Welcome to the situation that the rest of us work within outside of the US. In many countries universities are required to pay for the right to copy and distribute copyright materials to students (and its a lot of money). Bizarrely in Australia this includes restrictions on the use of different chapters from the same book at the same time by different classes. Everytime the US negotiates a 'free' trade agreement they're pushing for even more of this while trying to hide US industry/agriculture from competition. Here's a hint guys if a small country on the other side of the world can produce food of higher quality, cheaper (and with less energy cost as well) and ship it across the world to sell at a cheaper price in your country (without any subsidies, tax breaks, or other 'help') - you're being ripped off by your farmers. Hopefully the US will get even more draconian copyright laws internally - if you start experiencing what your government forces on the rest of us you might start trying to fix the problem...
HaHa, welcome to my world. Those of us dealing with compliance daily already are painfully aware of the problems arising from a compliance based operation. The main thing to take away from this would be that in almost every case, be it for security, copyright, or privacy, compliance is the main issue, and drives it's own agenda, while the day to day buisiness will fall to a secondary importance. If the company or institution fails as a result, not important. It is a strange state of affairs, indeed.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
But what's worse is when a court would say, "Your billion is ridiculous. Amend your complaint to say $100 million and I will allow it."
However, even in this example, what we're dealing with is a factual matter -- something that a jury ultimately decides is appropriate or not. A judge is just kind of a gatekeeper with facts. Whatever the complaint asks, the jury could award one dollar or a trillion, although an excessive award would likely be appealed.
Now when we're talking about a procedural issue -- in this instance, whether the type of relief the plaintiff is asking for is supported by the law -- then the court (the judge) gets to read/interpret the law and rule. And that ruling will be (a) persuasive to other courts and (b) binding on lower courts. Welcome to the common law system.
While those of us who work for private institutions would love to see fair use held up in this case, that's incredibly doubtful to happen. However, if the State of Georgia would care to issue instructions to state university employees allowing them to make copies, they would then be covered under sovereign immunity, a principle the Supreme Court has strengthened several times over the last couple decades. In short, sovereign immunity means that laws intended for citizens do not directly apply to the government unless that government says so. The tricky part comes in when an individual employee contravenes the federal law without official instructions.
However, a better approach is to un-ask the question. Stop allowing the products of faculty labor be used for private gain. Rarely are these texts created by the publishers, they are created by other academics, the same group of people the publishers are now targeting. Talk about biting the hands that feed you. And it's not like the academics make much (if any) profit from their published work. Their incentive to publish comes from salaries and bonuses paid by the universities. Since digital distribution models now present a credible challenge to traditional publishing, academia doesn't need these publishers. If the publishers rock the boat too hard with copyright threats, more and more faculty members will have their eyes opened to open texts and start distributing their own work freely.
That sounds like a lofty prediction, but it's already happening. Many state colleges in California have already started moving toward open texts, whether CC licensed, public domain or otherwise freely available. At the small, private college where I work, only two classes were taught last year using open texts, but that's two more than the year before, and the convenience of format-shifting they demonstrated has already made other professors start rethinking their choice of materials. And next year when I teach a communication research and theory class, the students weekly assignments will be creating their own textbook. After all, learning while teaching is an ancient and sound pedagogical tool.
I'm an engineering reference-book / text-book author in USA (mechanical, automotive). The book covers a niche subject, sales have been at about 1000 copies/year for the last 10 years. Sales were higher before that, right after the book was published in 1995. Price is set by our publisher, currently $100 list, $80 to students for a 900 page book.
I don't think it's a big deal if people copy parts of my book for personal academic use. I do get pissed when professors post class notes on the open internet that include direct scans/OCRs of pages from my book, often without any reference or credit. At that point, I send a polite request to take the offending material down. A few are apologetic and claim ignorance of the (C) laws in USA. Most don't bother to reply, but do take the pages down (perhaps grudgingly?) Every now and then I have to escalate, either to the university IP department (this has always worked) or to our publisher (they are the real "mean cop").
What to other textbook authors do? Does anyone else police their own works (Google Alerts seem to work fairly well), do other authors ignore this or rely on their publishers?