The Georgia State e-Reserves Case: A Self-Centered Analysis

I was pretty excited to hear about the ruling in the Georgia State University e-Reserves copyright case over the weekend, A) because we'd read about it in class, and it's nice to see that class discussion has real-world importance, and B) because it might actually directly affect my job (I'm in charge of e-Reserves at my university).

Basically, GSU put a ton of copyrighted material online, unprotected by passwords, for multiple terms, and publishers were pissed. The suit was filed in 2008.

Judge Orinda Evans ruled that only 5 of the 99 alleged infringements were indeed valid--the other 94 were considered fair use. Generally, fair use is determined by the following factors:

1. The purpose of the use (commercial/educational)
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount of the material used (the greater the amount copied, the less likely it is fair use)
4. The effect of use on the potential market for or value of the work 

The Judge all but officially instated the one chapter/ten percent rule (which is already my official policy): No more than one chapter or ten percent (whichever is less) shall be copied and made available.

She also--and this part I found interesting--practically jettisoned the no-subsequent-semester rule, which GSU had supposedly been violating. Many schools (mine included) say that material can be made available for one term, but after that permission must be acquired. However, the Judge declared this policy unnecessary. I think this might have something to do with her finding that some of the alleged infringing material was never actually accessed. I'll have to consider what this means for my policy--though I don't believe any professor has ever asked for anything to be on e-reserve longer than one term.

Overall, I'm not really surprised by the ruling. Everything I've read (because, let's get real, I'm not going to read the actual 350-page document) places  the decision squarely within everything I understand fair use to be--it's perhaps even a bit more lenient.

And I'm sure the publishers are still going to be pissed, but this is definitely a W for libraries. I am all for making educational material available to the masses, and honestly I'm pretty skeptical about the benefits of copyright anyway.

If you want to read more, I recommend THIS article in the Chronicle of Higher Education and THIS blog post from Kevin Smith at Duke.

Legalize Pirate Libraries!

This article by Christopher Kelty made me have so many feels. I got sad, and then I got angry, and then I got sad again, and it left me just on the wrong side of hopelessness.

It talked about the shuttering of library.nu, an illegal purveyor of over 400,000 digital books with a user base comprised chiefly of the "global middle class," i.e., poor. The article profiled the typical users in this way: "Maybe they were students once, but went on to find jobs and found families. We made them in some cases - we gave them a four-year taste of the life of the mind before sending them on their way with unsupportable loans. In other cases, they made themselves, by hook or by crook." We're talking people who are hungry to learn, but lacking the megabucks necessary to compile the kind of library they'd eagerly devour.

Library.nu was meeting that need.

OK, yes, linking to illegally copied digital versions of copyrighted books is illegal. But why? This is the sharing of ideas, the transmission of information. It's giving people the means of education, the means of providing a fulfilling and enriched life. Publishers say they are "protecting" the work of authors, but are they? By restricting access to their work, I suggest that publishers are doing authors a disservice--fewer people read it, fewer people can engage with it, and fewer people can expand and build upon it.

I just finished a module on open access that included some readings about institutional repositories--where scholars and researchers submit their work into a self-archived, usually online and open, repository rather than having it published in a journal. And while there are problems with this (such as the lack of the "prestige" of publication), I really see far more advantages, both to authors and academia as a whole, as well as the wider world of curious learners.

What really sent me over the top with this article was the comparison to the pharmaceutical industry and their restriction of AIDS medications in favor of profits and "intellectual property."

ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME.

So maybe education is not life and death, but it's unarguably up there on the List of Important Things (Maslow be damned).

I find it deplorable that we live in a world in which sharing information is criminal, but restricting it is common practice.

Copyright Fun

At my library, we've been learning about copyright all summer. Would you believe we didn't have a university copyright policy, or hardly any information available regarding copyright? So we're making a push to educate faculty so there's no more slightly-illegal reader-copying going on that could get us in trouble!

The more I looked into it (and watched that video), the more I realized how strange and nuanced (and kind of silly) the laws really are. For example, one of the things I'm in charge of is e-Reserves, which means I scan material into a PDF, and add it to our catalog for students to access online. This is OK and considered fair use, as long as it only remains available for one semester. However, if a professor were to do essentially the same thing--scan it and make it available on eClass--that would be the equivalent of making copies and handing them out to the class, which is NOT OK. Even though it seems the same, one is considered fair use, and the other is not.

It's been rather challenging to learn all the details, and even more challenging trying to explain them to professors who don't understand why they can't just make a copy of an article. But it's definitely an important thing to get a hold on. Maybe even more so because of how many are unaware of how the law works. You're liable whether you know it or not!

I'm really glad our library is taking the reigns and educating people about this. It'd be the worst to have a huge lawsuit slapped on you when you didn't know you were doing anything wrong! Check out the LibGuide one of our librarians made. It has a lot of useful information.

Is your library heading up a copyright crusade? What techniques have you used to make your campus copyright-friendly?