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In the news



[MOD NOTE: See full complaint at: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/documents/GSUlawsuitcomplaint.pdf]

From "Inside Higher Ed""
Three publishers sued Georgia State University Tuesday, charging that digitally distributed course materials were violating their copyrights, The New York Times reported. The case could be the online equivalent of litigation waged by publishers years ago against printed coursepacks - although those suits were generally filed against copy shops. Georgia State told the Times that it hadn't seen the suit and couldn't comment, but the publishers' lawyer told the newspaper that the university had asserted its rights to use the material. The lawyer said that several other universities, contacted with similar complaints, had agreed to change policies. Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications filed the suit.

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JE: Note that two of the plaintiffs are not-for-profit university presses. This is in part a case about the "free rider" issue, where one not-for-profit objects to another not-for-profit's not carrying its own weight. I anticipate we will see an increasing amount of activity in this area, as the larger research universities (the primary creators of intellectual property) express resentment in a multitude of ways for not being compensated for their research and publishing activities.

Joe Esposito