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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.
I'm the submitter, and I'm in the political science graduate program at GSU, so I can only speak for it (and really, only the classes I have taken and anecdotal evidence from others). 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. Other times, they will put them on online course reserves, where you can print out the article or book chapters yourself. Usually this is done in conjunction with using books (that have to be purchased) and articles available for free (to the student) on databases that the University subscribes to. A lot of students will print off these articles as well (which is what I believe is one of the things the publishers are complaining about). Some professors also just provide course packets. Basically, it seems these publishers feel like fair use costs them money, and they want to get rid of it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
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
I teach a graduate-level cryptography course with no assigned textbook --- the reading assignments are almost entirely based on research papers. These are mostly available on line "for free", but this is only because academic publishers haven't aggressively pursued their copyright claims and locked this material down.*
[...]
* Incidentally, academic publishers play almost no role in the production or even the typesetting of this material. Even book layout is handled by unpaid volunteers. However, to publish in the top conferences and journals you have to sign your life away. It's ridiculous.
Most respectable publishers for the CS field have a "self archiving" policy that lets people put their papers on their web site. When they do, all you have to do is give the students the link and tell them to read the paper. No infringement involved.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
Same thing here. I got my degree in Compsci, and started a few courses on Sociology. There's a lot of stuff to read, and If I buy all the books from a single course, I'd end with 20 of them by the end of the year, a no-go. Fortunately, in Argentina, copying at universities is more legitimated, teachers even encourage their students to copy the books they wrote if they can't buy the real thing. Somehow, book publishers still exist and don't try to install a police state. Go figure. :-/
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
It's totally unclear. I've published a number of papers in conferences and journals and along the way I've signed a bunch of copyright forms. Every one is different. Some of the forms include very strong language about reproduction, some have personal reproduction rights, some say nothing.
Now you are right that some of these sources probably maintain a policy that allows self-archiving, but it's not totally clear which ones, and whether this represents a permanent license grant or just a policy that can be revoked at any time. I post my papers (in various forms) anyway, and nobody's ever said anything about it. But that's because there's no money to be made off of me --- the adoption of a rule like the one discussed in this article would change that.
Furthermore, although I try to avoid it, I do occasionally host copies of helpful research materials for my class in the event that the original sources go dark. Usually this is because the material just isn't being maintained and nobody minds at all, but technically it's a big copyright violation.
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
There is no hard and fast rule about what is and is not fair use. Multiple copies for classroom use in the context of teaching are explicitly mentioned in the statue. As other posters have noted, this is more of an issue for small graduate courses - undergraduates typically use a textbook. In some cases works are out of print. Finally, in academic publishing, this is hardly about authors making money - academics don't write academic books to make money, they do it to advance their fields and their own careers.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson