May 12, 2008
How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges
Laura N. Gasaway, associate dean for academic affairs and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, says that a lawsuit recently filed against Georgia State University regarding electronic reserves could have implications for how colleges distribute course material online. The suit, brought by three publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and SAGE Publications — alleges that Georgia State professors infringed publishers’ copyrights by “inviting students” to download, view, and print material from thousands of copyrighted works. Ms. Gasaway’s remarks assume the details of Georgia State’s practices, as described in the complaint, are accurate.
Q. Is Georgia State’s use of electronic course material different from other institutions?
A. If you have a continuum where on one side are institutions that always seek permission before putting things on electronic reserve and on the other side are institutions that never seek permission, Georgia State appears to be on that far end of almost never seeking permission. My belief is that more libraries fall somewhere in the middle. They certainly believe that some of the material they put on electronic reserve can be disseminated under fair use. But they believe they need to get permission and pay royalties to use other material.
Q. Are there other reasons the publishers sued Georgia State?
A. The publishers may have been interested in showing that state-supported institutions are not immune from litigation. State-supported entities can’t be sued for damages. And the publishers in this case did not seek damages. They asked only for an injunction.
Q. Is this lawsuit a warning from publishers to other institutions that they’ll be sued, too, unless they negotiate with publishers about their use of e-reserves?
A. One could certainly take it that way. Several other institutions, once they got cease-and-desist letters from publishers about their use of online course material, developed policies and began to pay royalties.
Q. What’s your best guess of how this case will be resolved?
A. It will settle.
Q. What would such a settlement look like?
A. Georgia State could be required to adopt certain policies in order for the publishers to drop their litigation. What other institutions have done is to develop and publicize policies and remind their faculty about them. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Monday May 12, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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When traditional business models are threatened by digital alternatives (granted some of which are illegal under current copyright law), they can either get creative and help create a new market…. or sue their clients. The latter is, I think, a poor choice and will hasten transformative change in which the plaintiffs will not be welcome participants.
http://blog.oer.sbctc.edu/2008/04/create-new-markets-or-sue-your-clients.html
— Cable Green May 12, 05:32 PM #
Agreed. But when people repeatedly ignore the existing rules, you have to do something to first get their attention. This does that.
No damages are sought here. The suit is intended to stop the current bad behaviour and begin to create a motivation for the new markets you speak of to be created because creativity alone can’t be foist upon people unwilling to accept change.
— Rob May 13, 07:08 AM #
Did I miss an earlier article about this case? This seems very vague. What exactly did Georgia State Univ do? Did the Univ have access to the journals via OUP, CUP, and Sage databases for their students? Was the access via a WebCT or Blackboard type online classroom situation where students are required to log in?
— Josh May 13, 09:33 AM #
Yes, you did about a month ago—see article from NYTimes at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/technology/16school.html
— Georgia May 13, 10:19 AM #
Josh – you did miss an earlier article that had a link to the actual complaint filed by the publishers. GSU did have its reserves in a “closed” system – but not closed enough for the publishers. The real problem, IMO, is that GSU had taken digital copies (PDF’s, etc.) of copyrighted content and placed those copies inside their system. If the course reserve page had simply provided links to the documents themselves, which resided on the publisher’s servers, I think that there would have been no real problem.
I think that both Cable and Rob have valid points. It is telling to me that the publishers are NOT seeking punitive damages, but mostly a “cease and desist”, just writ larger.
Ultimately BOTH sides of the conversation need to find ways to make transformative change. The problem is that when only one party decides change is necessary and makes changes unilaterally, then the other party is going to react, and probably not well. See the ongoing RIAA madness for just one example.
— Scott May 13, 10:51 AM #
If the materials (presumably pdfs) were accessible to both teachers and students equally, and were obtained from the library system which pays to have access to the collections, AND posted within a system in which only registered students had access to (for example, WebCT) then there are no damages. In fact, there is no lawsuit except in the fantasy world of over-zealous lawyers. Why would a judge assign damages if there was no monetary loss? If pdfs were being published to an open-system (i.e. a publically accessable website), then it is a different story because there is potential loss of income.
This is a ridiculous case.
— Ed May 14, 12:03 PM #
This situation is created when copyright laws and technology are at odds with each other. If I had to place bets my guess is that technology will win in the long run
— Jerry C Olson May 16, 09:33 AM #
I belive GSU is being sued over their electronic course packs not the library’s reserves. There is a major difference in the two. I believe the bookstore was the provider of the course packs not the library. Although GSU staff are not allowed to discuss it at this point in time.
— Katherine Ott May 16, 04:49 PM #