RE: Scholarly communication, copyright, and fair use

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

In the case of Georgia State, articles and book chapters were scanned
and posted on sites that were accessible to the general public. Only
after publishers protested were password protections even instituted.
(No doubt they were also instituted to keep publishers from snooping
around for infringements!) Now, one might reasonably ask who might be
interested in reading such materials besides students enrolled in the
courses that have to read them. Nevertheless, this kind of
unprotected posting is an obvious violation of copyright law.

Copyright law also does distinguish between individuals making
personal copies for study and research and institutions making
multiple copies for students or employees. So, yes, there is a
difference under the law as to how students get the materials.

Sanford G. Thatcher
Executive Editor for Social Sciences and Humanities
Penn State University Press

>Sandy Thatcher wrote:
>
>>If the library subscribes to journals in electronic form and
>>teachers provide URLs to the content paid for, publishers have
>>no objections. When libraries turn into subsidiary printing
>>operations and create many more copies of articles than they
>>purchased through subscription, that indeed exceeds what they
>>paid for and interferes with the market for the publishers'
>>products.
>
>So if the teacher provides links to paid-for .pdf files of
>articles and the student then prints them out, that's OK, but if
>the teacher has them printed out ahead of time it's not? Does
>anyone really believe that such course packs are being read by
>anyone other than legitimately registered students?
>
>Michael Fitzgerald
>Electronic Services Librarian
>Learning Resources Division
>University of the District of Columbia
>Washington, DC 20008
>phone: 202-274-6387
>fax: 202-274-6012