Academic Publishers Ask The Impossible In GSU Copyright Suit 221
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."
Right to Read (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Re:Stop stealing copyrighted material. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Only a Plaintiff Proposition (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the easiest way here is for the Vice-Chancellor/President/COO of the Universities to organise a boycott of those publishers.
Implicit in this is:
- Establish a new publishing house, for and by Universities
- Stop all puchases and subscriptions to those publishers
- A few phone calls to other universities to do the same.
Universities have enough financial clout to fight this one. Independant research organisations would not be able to afford NOT to change publishers.
Yes, there is a LOT of short term pain in taking these actions, but I'd say that the long term effects if this were to succeed and the remedy be granted in full, would cause chaos in research for decades.
Re:Only a Plaintiff Proposition (Score:2, Insightful)
Plaintiff demands the Moon, but because it's only a proposal, nobody is outraged?
No, I'm sorry. Even as a proposal this is utterly ridiculous. I am outraged. Were I working at that university my solution would be simple: screw you, Oxford, Cambridge, Sage and other archaic publishers. I'd cancel all my textbook requests for my classes, use *zero* conventional publisher-copyrighted material (Creative Commons and public domain okay), and hand-draw and photograph my own pictures if I had to when putting together my own class materials. Heck, I'd get students involved in the production. Then I'd make it available for anyone else to use under Creative Commons license. I'd put in 5 times the effort I normally would to remove all dependency on ordinary published materials until the publishers got the message that I don't need them and their unreasonable terms. There comes a point where the cost of licensing already-made material from publishers exceeds the effort it takes to make things myself. Cross that line, and publishers can look forward to eventually going out of business, because I'll start building more of my own stuff, and I'll get scores of students to help who are tired of paying $100/textbook.
That's my proposal. Monitor that.
Re:Stop stealing copyrighted material. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like excessive copying to me (Score:4, Insightful)
I think copying is more a symptom of students burdened with costs - tuition, segregated fees, dorms/living expenses (as many do not attend schools near their homes where they can remain living with their parents), and book fees - all while watching governments across the board de-prioritize educational funding so that school becomes unaffordable unless you are destitute or rich.
From the student's perspective: What has changed so much in mathematics up through calculus that I need to buy a new revision of the textbook every two years, other than the publishers don't want used book sales (much like the other slashdot article stated that game companies don't like used sales because it is 'worse than piracy from an economic standpoint'). Why is the only way I can get a book in a bundled package with a study guide and online resource that I neither want nor does my professor require? Why do I need to buy a particular book if I already know of a better one, but my professor requires the 10 odd problems assigned out of the book? What am I paying my professor for if most or all the information they are professing is from a book I could have studied outside the classroom?
Gripes, but I think they are legitimate gripes that lead to a very important question: should education be a for-profit enterprise with all its knowledge locked up into highly restrictive IP laws, or does the knowledge output of academia belong to the society as a whole and as such should be subsidized by that society as a whole?
Re:Sounds like excessive copying to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds pretty excessive to me. This isn't quoting a paragraph, this is taking a substantial portion of the book. If you need your students to have read it, get enough copies for the library. If that's too expensive, don't make them read it. If you're going to base your module round it, make them buy it. Sounds a lot like you've got an underfunded library that they're trying to work around by violating copyright. It's certainly not the behaviour I've seen of lecturers in my field.
Fair use includes multiple copies for classroom (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair use explicitly includes the possibility of multiple copies for classroom use [copyright.gov] 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.
Re:Open Source Academics (Score:4, Insightful)