‘Textbook’ Anthologies on Campuses Are Curbed by Ruling on Copyrights
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The ubiquitous photocopier has revolutionized the spread of information on college campuses in recent years, allowing professors to improvise “textbooks” by quickly and cheaply compiling collections of materials excerpted from many sources. But a new Federal copyright ruling is already making it more difficult for professors to assemble these anthologies and more expensive for students to buy them. “There are professors who would argue that the free flow of information means the flow of free information,” said Joseph S. Alen of the Copyright Clearance Center, a nonprofit clearinghouse for copyright holders. “But this kind of anthologizing requires compensation to the copyright holders.” In a lawsuit brought by eight publishers against Kinko’s Graphics Corporation, Judge Constance Baker Motley of the United States District Court in Manhattan ruled on March 28 that businesses that commercially copy professors’ collections of articles and excerpts without first obtaining permission violate the Copyright Act. Complaint by Publishers “Making a single copy of an excerpt of a textbook for a professor’s use is one thing,” said Charles Sims, a lawyer for the publishers. “But Kinko’s was making an enormous amount of money off these works without giving any money to the people who created these works.” As the cost of college textbooks has spiraled, the modest, drably covered anthologies — termed “course packets” or “course resource books” — have proliferated. Kinko’s, a national chain of 560 copy shops based in Ventura, Calif., copies and binds tens of thousands of anthologies each year, selling them to students for $10 to $20 — considerably less than the cost of most college textbooks. David S. Peterson, a professor of history at the University of Texas, said the anthologies were not only cheaper than textbooks but also offered students a “diversity of points of view” culled from a “broader survey” of writings and documents. “When my father was in college and took a course on the Renaissance,” Professor Peterson said, “the professor assigned a textbook that taught only the established orthodoxy. Now I can make my own.” Suit Filed Against Kinko’s But as the popularity of such anthologies has increased, so has concern about the unauthorized photocopying of copyrighted material. While many universities and copy shops routinely seek permission to copy material, others have been flagrantly lax. More : query.nytimes.com |