Chronicle article: Copy-Shop That Made Coursepacks for U. of FloridaFaces Lawsuit Alleging Copyright Infringement

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

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http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/10/2002101406n.htm

              - The text of the article is below -

  Monday, October 14, 2002

  Copy-Shop That Made Coursepacks for U. of Florida Faces
  Lawsuit Alleging Copyright Infringement

  By MEGAN ROONEY
    
  Three publishing companies have filed a copyright-infringement
  lawsuit against a Florida photocopying center for allegedly
  making mass copies of protected material without permission.
  The copies were assembled into coursepacks and sold at the
  University of Florida at Gainesville, which is not a party to
  the suit.
  
  The publishers -- MIT Press, Elsevier Science, and John Wiley
  & Sons -- print mainly 
  
  "Any professional copy shop that is making copies in
  coursepacks and isn't getting a license from the CCC is
  breaking copyright law," said Roy Kaufman, associate general
  counsel for John Wiley & Sons. "We assume that every copy shop
  knows the law at this point, so either they are following the
  law or they are violating it by their own choice."
  
  Coursepacks are collections of excerpts from books, journals,
  and other sources that professors assign as required readings
  for specific courses.
  
  Copyright infringement could be a frequent occurrence at
  college campuses, said Frederic Haber, general counsel for the
  copyright center, as a single college course may require
  thousands of copies in coursepacks. If no one gets permission
  to make the copies, he said, writers and publishers can lose
  money. "Each copy may only cost a few pennies, but it adds
  up," he said.
  
  "Usually, the copy center is the entity that secures the
  copyright permission," Mr. Haber said, adding that sometimes
  professors or department administrators file the request. "In
  this case, this business very consistently illegally copied
  mass amounts of protected materials."
  
  Susan Spilka, a spokeswoman for John Wiley & Sons, said the
  lawsuit, which was filed last week in federal district court
  in Gainesville, was necessary because "copyright infringement
  hurts a lot of the authors whose works are being taken."
  
  "Very often, it's college professors who end up losing the
  money," she said. "There are also many academic and scholarly
  societies who are partners in publishing -- like the MIT Press
  -- who lose money. That money could be used to fund scholarly
  work."
  
  Kenneth Roberts, president of Custom Copies, said he was
  confident that his business would "come out on top."
  
  "I think we're being unfairly vilified," he said. 
  
  Mr. Roberts's lawyer, Thompkins W. White, said the publishing
  companies "are operating on incomplete and incorrect
  information."
  
  "Custom Copies has a solid system in place for clearing
  copyrights," he said. "They deal with thousands of different
  copyrighted items, and in the past, if a few have slipped
  through the cracks because of time crunches or the sheer
  magnitude of the copies they were making, they always paid the
  amount they owed as soon as they realized the mistake."
 
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Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education