By KATIE HAFNER
Published: April 16, 2008
Three prominent academic publishers are suing Georgia State University, contending that the school is violating copyright laws by providing course reading material to students in digital format without seeking permission from the publishers or paying licensing fees.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Atlanta, the publishers — Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications — sued four university officials, asserting “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” by Georgia State, which the university distributes through its Web site.
The lawsuit, which may be the first of its kind, raises questions about digital rights, which are confronting many media companies, but also about core issues like the future of the business model for academic publishers.
Indeed, as the printed word is put in digital form, holding onto rights seems to many like climbing up the slippery sides of a glass. The case centers on so-called course packs, compilations of reading materials from various books and journals. The lawsuit contends that in many cases, professors are providing students with multiple chapters of a given work, in violation of the "fair use" provision of copyright law. The publishers are seeking an order that the defendants secure permissions and pay licensing fees to the copyright owners.
Officials at Georgia State, in Atlanta, declined to comment on the lawsuit. “We have been informed that a lawsuit is being filed,” a spokeswoman, DeAnna Hines, said. “However, we have not received it, and therefore we won’t be able to comment, pending potential litigation.”
Over the years, electronic course packs have become increasingly common, supplanting their physical counterparts. They consist of reading material taken from a variety of printed sources, which is then scanned, compiled and posted on a university’s Web site. By some estimates, electronic course packs now constitute half of all syllabus reading at American colleges and universities.
“Digitally delivered course content is probably more widespread than we’d like to think,” said Patricia S. Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, which supports the lawsuit.
R. Bruce Rich, a partner in the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which is representing the plaintiffs, said that in spite of repeated attempts to work with Georgia State, “they indicated that they had no interest in having a discussion.”
Mr. Rich said that in a letter his firm received last summer, Georgia State officials “indicated their view that all of their practices are covered under the fair use doctrine.”
He said that over the last year or so, half a dozen or so other universities had been contacted about copyright violations. Those institutions, he said, showed more willingness to work with the copyright holders and establish stricter university policies around licensing the material.
Legal precedents exist for cases involving course packs from photocopied material, but experts say the lawsuit against Georgia State is the first to be filed over electronic course packs.
In 1991, Basic Books and others won a suit again Kinko’s, which was selling course packs it had photocopied.
And in 1992, Princeton University Press and others sued Michigan Document Services, a photocopying service, which was producing course packs for University of Michigan students without permission from the copyright holders. The business was eventually found to be in copyright infringement.
“Georgia State’s activity seems identical with Michigan Document Services’ activity,” said Susan P. Crawford, a visiting professor at Yale Law School.
But she pointed out that unlike Kinko’s and Michigan Document Services, Georgia State was not making money from the electronic course packs.
Yet, she added: “It’s difficult to argue that this is a truly noncommercial use. Georgia State may be a nonprofit institution, but its students pay a lot of money for course materials, and would presumably pay money for the materials being provided to them by the university.”
Frank Smith, editorial director for academic books at Cambridge University Press, said that for electronic use in a course, Cambridge typically charges 17 cents a page for each student, and generally grants permission for use of as much as 20 percent of a book.
“Publishers have created a market for course materials that is very similar to the market for luxury goods,” Professor Crawford said. “There is only one version available, and at a very high price.”
The dispute recalls problems the music industry had in protecting the format of an album on a CD. “What publishers don’t understand is they could disaggregate,” Professor Crawford said. “They could electronically rip apart their books and sell them chapter by chapter, and everyone would be happier.”
The publishing industry’s reluctance to do so , she said, stemmed from “a fear that they would cannibalize the market for the printed object, and they’re reluctant to let go of that model.”
Other experts wonder if such a lawsuit might be premature, emphasizing that in many ways it is too early to settle on a business model for the distribution of digital materials.
“In academic publishing, we need to find the digital services people really want,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library based in San Francisco. “I wonder if this will turn out to be an ‘attack the innovator’ suit like the peer-to-peer suits for the music industry. Sometimes a bit of slack can help us all discover a winning formula."
