So I am almost never in the library, but I sat there reading a book that was in course reserve and overheard an interesting discussion that was going on every few minutes amongst their student employees. They kept telling the employees that course reserve is no longer going to except course packs that are not made through the school or XanEdu, the company hired by the bookstore to develop the course packs you must purchase through the bookstore.
Throughout my education at the school, I’ve had to do both, buy course packs though the school, and ones through a copy center, usually the one on Laguardia. Usually, when I purchased from the copy center, it cost me about $10-$15 and the ones through the school cost me about a shocking $100. So obviously, I preferred to purchase through the copy center, and any possibility that I’d have to purchase more from the bookstore, notorious for quite a markup on photocopies, was disheartening.
So what’s the difference? Among the few listed on the bookstore website, it’s stated that XanEdu guarantees “100% copyright compliant” and claims that “every item in a coursepack must have use-permission granted before the coursepack can be sold”. So what can be an explanation for the high price is “the cost of royalty payments varies with the content because each copyright holder determines the amount charged”. But this leads me to ask, if the school pays money to subscribe to databases and have a huge library, and this is included in our tuition, why should we pay twice for this information in this format if we are already granted permission to it, especially if the product is being developed through the school?
Course reserve, which provides material to students who wish to not purchase some class books, made this decision because they could not guarantee the copyright on the material in the coursepacks not made through the bookstore. Whatever the case, it is more money that potential comes out of our pocket and goes to the school. Instead of boycotting these rouge coursepacks not made by the school, why doesn’t the school try to solve the monetary problem and not use copyright as an excuse to make more money for the university. That’s just my opinion/rant, what’s yours?
http://www.bookstores.nyu.edu/faculty.services/course.packs.html
Some Rights Reserved
Wow! I guess I was lucky that I never had to buy a course pack through the book store for any of my classes. I didn’t know that it costs that much when purchased at the school book store compared to the cop center. Well, I don’t think it is only the book store in our college that seems to rip students off. However, I was just wondering if the course packet that we purchase at the copy center for 10-15$ is illegal. Is it?
Katherine asks the question we always need to be thinking about in this class, i.e. WWCLS? (What Would Copyright Law Say?). From what Austin tells us above and our own intuition, I think we can probably assume that the copy shop coursebooks are not getting permissions/licenses for each work.
So then we’re firmly in the territory of the copyright statutes, and you guys should be able to work through the analysis at this point. Are the copy shop packets infringing any of the rights from Section 106, and if so, which ones? And if there is infringement, is it nonetheless excused by fair use under Section 107?
Even if one of you doesn’t have all the answers, together you should be able to put the pieces together here.
I would argue that although there is definite infringement if permission is not acquired before creating the course packs, they fall under fair use. Course packs typically do not copy the majority of the texts from which they take excerpts. Also, they are for educational purposes, not commercial profit. I would also argue that they do not significantly effect the market for the copyrighted work, though this one is debatable. As for the nature of the work, I am having trouble where this fits in with the other three factors of fair use, so maybe someone can jump in…
While it is obvious, that this method clearly serves the purpose of taking more student money, I wonder why students seemingly aren’t doing anything about it. As a student community, we have, just like everybody else, the First Amendment right. I guess most schools, are used to a majority of students just paying relentless horrendous amounts of money, since they see it as a long term investment ( why, for instance, are bookstores still around if a book can be purchased for less than half the original price online, or obtained from the reserve desk). I think it is similar with the copyright discussion existing in this case. Although copyright holders are already collecting royalties in the first round of payment, there are still students who don’t give much thought to a double payment. Although I consider it a waste of money, the majority would have to realize and see it the same way, in order to form a voice that prevents the student body to be subjected to such a surcharge.
I’m not sure the First Amendment will save you here. It’s focused on your ability to speak, not your ability to hear others speak. So, to the extent that one could make out such a claim (and I think it would be pretty difficult under existing law), it would be an author’s claim to make, not yours.
That said, it’s absolutely a ripe area for student activism. Just because you’re not having a specific constitutional right violated in a judicially-cognizable way does not mean you’re not getting screwed
I agree with the “Fair Use” argument! Course packets are not redistributions of entire books for a “special” price, but instead “reasonable” portions of relevant material extracted from these texts verbatim. Because these portions of text are usually extracted directly from the original text, all author and text acknowledgement (such as author name, text title, and page number) are provided for the student or reader’s reference. Also, I wonder if the fact that course-readers are compilations specifically designed by the professor, in terms of the organization of each text portion, would fall under Fair Use…
However, isn’t this still risky because you must argue fair use AFTER someone has accused you of infringement? And since fair use decisions vary on a case-by-case basis, it is possible that a course pack that would seem to fall under fair use could be deemed infringement. Thus, it ultimately seems safer to switch to a service like XanEdu, which assures 100% copyright compliancy.
I think this issue highlights the fair use problem quite nicely!