Re: Another post about the Georgia State copyright case

[Kevin Smith <kevin.l.smith@duke.edu>]

The lawsuit itself is what has been subsidized.  The Copyright 
Clearance Center is bearing half of the plaintiff's costs, 
according to court papers.  I have heard, but have no direct 
evidence, that the AAP is also paying some of the bills.

It is certainly true that there is ideology (or principle, since 
the other guy's principles always look like ideology) on both 
sides of this case, as there is in most lawsuits.  But it was the 
publishers who decided to bring the case in the first place, and 
it was that decision that Sandy and I were debating.  I still 
maintain that something as expensive as a federal lawsuit goes 
not get initiated unless the plaintiffs (or the others who are 
paying for the suit) expect to make substantially more money out 
of it then they spend prosecuting it.

Also, the origin of the doomsday rhetoric is naturally in the 
plaintiff's complaint, where they try in the first instance to 
convince the court that there is a terrible wrong that justifies 
bringing the case and which must be set right.  I entirely agree 
that the rhetoric here has been overheated, for the simple reason 
that I am unconvinced by the claims made about the "original sin" 
on which the lawsuit is founded.

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Scholarly Communications
Duke University, Perkins Library
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu


On Jun 15, 2011, at 7:32 PM, "Alex Holzman" <aholzman@temple.edu> wrote:

> Excuse me, but who subsidizes Oxford, Cambridge, or Sage?  The 
> first two return rather substantial amounts of money to their 
> home universities, who do not seem to be complaining about what 
> their presses are doing.  Indeed, some years ago Oxford 
> University specifically used some of the "surplus" its Press 
> generated to help the university compete with salaries offered 
> to star faculty members by American Ivy League and other 
> well-off schools.  I'm pretty sure that didn't help OUP's 
> year-to-year operations.  Pint is, this is all a lot more 
> complicated than evil publishers aligned against virtuous 
> librarians.
>
> To my mind, this whole episode began with the extreme policy 
> Sandy cites.  Extreme ideological behavior tends to beget equal 
> and opposite reactions; I expect blame and credit can be found 
> everywhere, depending on the observer's point of view.  The 
> really unfortunate aspect in all this is that it tends to drown 
> out moderate voices on both sides who are trying to discover 
> new and innovative ways to cooperate.  Though ideologically 
> driven behavior seems to be part of the zeitgeist, many 
> university press publishers and many librarians have worked to 
> counter it over the past few years, exemplified by the ARL-AAUP 
> working group founded this past year following several years of 
> gradually increasing library-press meetings and exchanges and 
> working together on actual projects.  Kudos to the moderates.
>
> Alex Holzman
> Director
> Temple University Press
>
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Kevin Smith
> <kevin.l.smith@duke.edu> wrote:
>
>> The plaintiffs in this case had clever lawyers as well, from a 
>> prominent New York law firm.  I very much doubt they would 
>> have encouraged their clients to bring a federal lawsuit in 
>> order to vindicate a sense of moral outrage; that is an 
>> extravagance even these wealthy, and well-subsidized, 
>> publishers could hardly afford.  This case is, and always has 
>> been, about money.  As it begins to appear that the gamble of 
>> suing one's customers in order to squeeze out greater revenues 
>> has been a losing one, it is inevitable, I suppose, that it 
>> will be dressed up as a matter of principle.
>>
>> By the way, I do not address the issue of the application of 
>> the new GSU policy for the sound reason that I know nothing 
>> about it. All I have seen is the highly partisan rhetoric 
>> found in the plaintiffs' filings, which Sandy repeats here. 
>> The judge may or may not see things the same way, and it is 
>> her opinion that matters now.
>>
>> Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
>> Scholarly Communications Officer
>> Duke University
>> kevin.l.smith@duke.edu