Slashdot Mirror
Publishers Win On Only Five Claims In Copyright Case Against Georgia State
McGruber writes with news of a ruling in a copyright case brought against Georgia State by several publishers over the university's electronic reserve system: "The Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting that a federal judge has ruled in favor of Georgia State University on 69 of 74 copyright claims filed by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications. In a 350-page ruling, Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans found that 'fair use protected a Georgia State University professor's decision to allow students to access an excerpt online through the university's Electronic Reserves System.' While the 69 of the 74 claims were rejected, the judge also found that five violations did occur 'when the publisher lost money because a professor had provided free electronic access to selected chapters in textbooks.' SAGE Publications prevailed on four of these five claims, while Oxford University Press won the fifth claim. Cambridge University Press lost all its claims."
From Inside Higher Ed: "And the judge also rejected the publishers' ideas about how to regulate e-reserves — ideas that many academic librarians said would be unworkable. At the same time, however, the judge imposed a strict limit of 10 percent on the volume of a book that may be covered by fair use (a proportion that would cover much, but by no means all, of what was in e-reserves at Georgia State, and probably at many other colleges). And the judge ruled that publishers may have more claims against college and university e-reserves if the publishers offer convenient, reasonably priced systems for getting permission (at a price) to use book excerpts online. The lack of such systems today favored Georgia State, but librarians who were anxiously going through the decision were speculating that some publishers might be prompted now to create such systems, and to charge as much as the courts would permit."
Here is a pretty good analysis from one of Duke University's legal advisors (posting in his role as blogger rather than formal legal advice, of course). Generally a win for libraries, but there are some oddities. For example, the specific rules on proportionality that the judge set forth are a bit odd and potentially gameable: 10% by page count of a work fewer than 10 chapters, or up to one full chapter for a work with 10 or more chapters. Does this still hold if presses start deliberately putting out books with a ton of really short chapters? Are there cases where >10% by page count should still be fair use? Copyright law doesn't actually set a strict percentage limit, though there might be some advantages in clarity if it did.
Another interesting aspect, which I got from this also-interesting analysis of the decision, is that many of the claims never even got to a legal analysis stage, because the publishers couldn't produce sufficient evidence of having a registered copyright: either they couldn't find a signed copyright transfer from the author showing that the publisher actually had copyright properly assigned to them, or they couldn't produce evidence that they had registered the copyright (a prerequisite under U.S. law for suing).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
http://www.library.gatech.edu/services/reserves/index.php
When I was an undergrad, library reserves usually consisted of hard copy materials that the professor used to supplement the required items. It might be a different textbook, some notes that he had put together over the years, old tests, or any other similar materials. There were usually only one or two of these items so they were pretty tightly controlled by the library (kept behind the desk, check-out time very limited, can't leave the library, etc).
This is exactly what they should be doing. Fortunately, some are trying http://thecostofknowledge.com/ .
Why aren't the scientists copyrighting or putting their work into the public domain prior to submission?
Some do, especially in computer science; see, for example, the cryptology eprint archive. Consider, however, the guidelines for publishing a paper in the Journal of Algebra:
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
In case you were wondering who the copyright holder is:
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement. Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Basically, if you publish an article in this journal, you must give them the copyright, and your submission will be rejected if you published the article previously, including publishing in the public domain. This is not necessarily a bad thing; an unscrupulous scientist might try to publish the same paper in many journals, and make it appear that he has done more work than he actually has. However, in the current system of copyrights and academic publishers, this has the side effect of ensuring that a scientist cannot make his journal articles available to the public at no cost.
Palm trees and 8
In the particle physics community it is standard practice to upload preprints to arXiv. In the legalese section they state that most publishers are tolerant of preprints, but many do not want the final version of the paper to be uploaded to the arXiv. In any case, most people do upload the final version anyway. I have never heard of them loosing their copyright goons on anyone in the community for this; I guess they know that we are generally intolerant when it comes to such douchebaggery, so they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to come after us. Personally I fully support any initiative to break the hold that these outdated cartels have over the publishing of science.