If you thought the $60 course reader you bought at the beginning
of the quarter was so expensive because of publisher and author
royalties, you may be correct.
Westwood Copies, the popular copy shop where students buy course
readers, was sued by four publishers for copyright
infringements.
Elias Nagash, part-owner of Westwood Copies, and the lawyers for
both parties said the lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount
of money.
The lawsuit included allegations of 40 counts of infringed
works, which the plaintiffs believed to be representative of a much
larger pattern of unauthorized reproduction of copyright
materials.
Sam Nagash was also a defendant in the lawsuit and was listed as
a part-owner, but the attorney for Westwood Copies, Chris Ritter,
said Sam Nagash had nothing to do with the corporation and
didn’t know why he was a part of the lawsuit.
According to plaintiff attorney William Strong, Sam Nagash is an
owner and is liable for infringements committed by his business
under copyright law.
Copyright owners have the sole right to reproduce and distribute
their works, regardless of whether it is the publisher or author
who owns the copyright.
“The author of the article may or may not own the
copyright,” said Bob Weiner, vice president of Licensing
& Rightsholder Relations at the Copyright Clearance Center.
The reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material
without expressed written consent from the copyright owner is
infringement.
“What constitutes infringement is somebody making a copy
who is doing so out of the bounds of fair use and who does so
without the permission of the copyright,” Weiner said.
Linda Garro, a UCLA political science professor, is the author
of one of the works that was indicted for infringement. She was not
available for comment, but anthropology professor Elinor Ochs, who
taught a class with Garro in which the work was used, was not aware
of its inclusion in the lawsuit.
Weiner said it is likely the authors may not know that their
written work may be out of bounds of its copyright, since its
distribution may be at the sole discretion of its publisher.
Two landmark cases in the 1990s set the precedent for how
coursepacks are to be produced and distributed.
In 1991, Kinko’s Graphics Corp. was sued for copyright
infringement by Basic Books, a New York City publishing house.
Kinko’s had been reproducing materials provided by
professors and assembled coursepacks for sale to students.
Kinko’s had a copyright permission department which
believed that photocopying excerpts for coursepacks constituted the
fair use of materials since it was for educational use, but the
court differed.
Kinko’s and Basic Books settled out of court.
Reproducing materials for educational purposes is permitted for
small amounts of work only if there is a spontaneous need for them
and they will be used immediately.
“These criteria of brevity and spontaneity don’t
apply to coursepacks, which often contain large chunks of
copyrighted works and are usually formulated months before the
beginning of term,” Strong said.
Michigan Document Services Inc., a coursepack vendor like
Westwood Copies, was sued for copyright infringement by Princeton
University Press in 1995.
MDS assembled and sold the coursepacks on a per page basis
without taking the content into account.
MDS appealed the case, and the following year it was decided
that MDS’ reproduction of coursepack materials was fair since
they didn’t incur additional income for content.
Copyright definition in regards to coursepacks has been modified
over the years as photocopiers have become readily available and
textbooks have become more costly.
In the days prior to photocopy machines, professors would leave
coursepacks on reserve in libraries, which was not
infringement.
Even as photocopy machines became commonplace, students would
photocopy materials placed on reserve which were used to supplement
textbooks. This also did not constitute infringement, according to
Roberta J. Morris, law professor of the University of Michigan.
As professors assembled larger coursepacks, photocopying them in
a library became impractical and they started selling them in
university-town copy shops.
Larger coursepacks minimized the need for multiple textbooks.
Publishers realized this and saw the opportunity to recover lost
textbook money in coursepacks.