E-Reserves Under Fire From Publishers 208
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.'"
Relevant TED Talk (Score:5, Informative)
I encourage you to watch it too, even though it's a bit long (20min).
Re-examining the remix
http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed.html [ted.com]
Re:IANAL but I think the school will lose (Score:4, Informative)
Look up fair use. There's a lot of factors that go in to if use is fair, but most of them are such that educational use is often fair use. You probably have the widest latitude of all when it comes to using material for educational purposes.
Also the e-reserves system is one well founded in history. Schools would allow a professor to place a book on reserve for students. The students could then go and check out the book and copy the relevant section for the class. The whole point of the reserve system was that the book was held at the library for use for copying for a class, people could not check it out generally and take it home.
This has gone on for a very long time and been seen as fair. All e-reserves do is update this to the 21st century. The relevant material is digitized and students can access it if they are in the appropriate class.
Publishers need to stop being so fucking greedy when it comes to schools.
Re:Textbook Publishers (Score:3, Informative)
Cost of summer Microeconomics class at the local juco: $110, including fees.
Cost of new economics textbook for class at juco bookstore: $140.
Something is seriously dislocated when the book costs more than the course.
Re:Textbook Publishers (Score:1, Informative)
At the school where I teach, I don't choose the edition of the book. When the new edition comes out, the bookstore automagically "upgrades" me to the new version. Of course, this is a proprietary school, so they have a vested interest in this. If it were up to me, I would use a textbook for most subjects for at least five years. Some computer related topics have shorter lifespans, but the basics don't.
Re:For those keeping score at home... (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't say so. Everyone's told they must go to university or college to get a good job, so if the university has a captive audience, why wouldn't they charge what they can get away with?
In my campus bookstore, they are selling some books at 5% or 10% over list price... plus they make sure you don't get the booklist until three days before classes start. No ISBNs on the list. They're sure not doing this for the convenience of students.
Re:Textbook Publishers (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Textbook Publishers (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's more to prevent insider trading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading), which can be illegal most places.
Re:Textbook Publishers (Score:5, Informative)
Can it really be true that he had no say in it? I mean, not directly in normal circumstances, but the copyright belonged to him, right? Was it legal for him to tell you to copy it? If so, couldn't he have put that on the first page?
I'm not nitpicking, I'm actually curious how all that shit happens.
If it's anything like the University Press that I worked for, no, he couldn't put it on the first page, there's a standard copyright assertion/disclaimer that the place will use. No, it probably wasn't *strictly* legal for him to be saying that, and technically, it's not his copyright.
That's right. It's not his copyright. The entire point of the contract that an author and publisher sign is a temporary assignment of copyright for specific purposes, generally the publisher holds it for the first run, and maybe some subsequent reprints, until the book is declared out of print, and then the copyright reverts to the author.
This is pretty much necessary under current business practices, since deals for advertising, excerpting, and even designing and printing would all be kneecapped by having to return to the author constantly for written approval for every change and deal made. And since I've seen authors go incommunicado for literally months at a time, publishing would grind to a halt.
eBooks will have to change the formula slightly, since the book will never need to technically go out of print, so it'll probably see a move to term-periods of copyright assignment. Say, a publisher gets it for 5 years or some such before reversion.
As for if one publisher refused, another be willing? Not as likely as you think. Publishers in a field tend to talk to each other a lot, and find out things, and keep tabs on each other, and very few are willing to take on something that's going to be a clear loss in publishing, which with an author looking to give the book away, would probably do it. You'd be stuck doing self-publishing, and even for people who are subject matter experts, self-published books are a damn nightmare. Typos and awkward phrasing slip through, organization is horrible, there's usually no fact checking and source attribution checking, all because the person assumes they know the topic that well, and mistakes happen.
A large, heavily illustrated book costs about $20 to get printed at a professional printer if you do a print run of 1,000+. It's not the printing that costs the money, it's the original research, follow-up research, and editing that cost the money. The advanced-level Ukrainian language text book that my Press printed took the author five years of in-class and at-home work to create before she ever brought it to us, and then it took nearly another two years to get it printed. It's also the stuff that no one ever thinks of that costs the big money too. The book had hundreds of images that had to be converted to print quality, some starting out as crappy web images, some as massive posters. That all needs to be done out-of-house usually too.
Textbooks are fucking expensive to make, and the biggest bandits are usually the college bookstores to boot, especially when they buy back and resell used copies. If you're in a college town, check independent bookstores in your area. If you have the ISBN, you can usually get them to order it in (as far as I know, every University Press has a deal with at least one distributor, and most textbook publishers do too), and it'll usually be cheaper. Amazon is also a good bet, though shipping can be an issue.