In copyright-holder's never ending quest to crush fair-use, we find a new chapter. Publishers are suing Georgia State for their e-Reserve. Here is the story from the NYTimes.
The publishers claim that some material available on campus electronically contains too large of a percentage of copyrighted material. I am sure that by filing the lawsuit, they hope to convince skittish administrators to tighten e-reserve policies across the country.
Our library's e-reserve policy strikes a good balance at the moment, but I wonder if they won't be pressured to change now that lawsuits are in the air. . .
3 comments:
just wait 'til they found out what I post on my D2L sites....
One thing Polk Library does involving e-reserves is attempt to purchase a copy of what is being put on reserve. When a professor brings in a photocopy of a portion of a book for example, Polk Library then puts that original book on an order list, even if it is twenty years old and out of print.
You might be surprised at how hard it is to buy copies of some of the stuff put on e-reserve! Publishers can't be losing money if they don't even make the works available to buy anymore...
If the publishers aren't careful, the academic community will, for their own convenience and necessity, begin to to circumvent traditional publishing all together.
I have no doubt public libraries would be illegal if they had been created within the last decade.
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