Experts Weigh in on the Effects of the Georgia State Copyright Case

A closely watched trial in federal court in Atlanta, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., is pitting faculty, libraries, and publishers against one another in a case that could clarify the nature of copyright and define the meaning of fair use in the digital age. Under copyright law, the doctrine of fair use allows some reproduction of copyrighted material, with a classroom exemption permitting an unspecified amount to be reproduced for educational purposes.

At issue before the court is the practice of putting class readings on electronic reserve (and, by extension, on faculty Web sites). Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications,

with support from the Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center, are suing four administrators at Georgia State University. But the publishers more broadly allege that the university (which, under "state sovereign immunity," cannot be prosecuted in federal court) has enabled its staff and students to claim what amounts to a blanket exemption to copyright law through an overly lenient definition of the classroom exemption. The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction to stop university personnel from making material available on e-reserve without paying licensing fees. A decision is expected in several weeks. The Chronicle asked

experts in scholarly communications what the case may mean for the future:

Kevin Smith, the director of scholarly communications at Duke University discusses his perspective.

First, from the perspective of teaching faculty, the potential consequences depend very much on the ultimate decision in the case. If Georgia State prevails, and even if it loses and the injunction the judge issues is narrowly tailored to address those places, if any, where it deviates from accepted practice, then little will really change. Most colleges have reasonable fair-use

policies and practices, which could easily survive a carefully written judgment against Georgia State. But if the publishers who brought the case succeed in getting something close to the proposed injunction they have requested, there will be catastrophic consequences. Either higher education will get much more expensive, or options for exposing students to diverse materials will become extremely limited.

Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education.