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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.
I love these "congress should..." posts. While I agree most of the time and they are mostly for common sense law to protect the public interest everyone forgets that our congress is captured by corporate interests and will do *nothing* of the sort.
Congress should deal with the broken patent system.
Congress should make sure that individuals speech isn't squelched by corporate entities on the Internet.
etc.. etc..
It can go on for pages. Nothing is going to get done while lobbyists are basically running the systems.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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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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.
Unrealistic expectations. Since when do copyright enforcers know anything about higher education?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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"