[Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS

[Robert K. Peet]

The question of whether you can post copyrighted material on class 
websites without paying fees is far from trivial and there is no agreement 
among university lawyers. Here in North Carolina we have both ends of the 
spectrum represented by two major research universities a mere 15km part. 
Duke University lawyers assert it is perfectly legal for faculty to post 
anything held in the university library on their class websites, provided 
the material is password protected and only available to the specific 
class.  At the University of North Carolina our lawyers assert we have to 
pay royalties for what Duke faculty do for free, and the University pays 
almost $100,000 per year to implement this policy. Until the lawyers can 
decide, it is silly to emphasize education of faculty.

A way around this problem is for professional organizations to adopt 
liberal use policies, and for authors to preferentially select to publish 
in the journals of such organizations.  For example, the Ecological 
Society of America explicitly allows posting of articles from its journals 
to a class websites (see http://esapubs.org/esapubs/permissions.htm) with 
no fee.  I encourage all of you to work with your professional societies 
to adopt similar policies, and then to preferentially publish in those 
journals.


  ======================================================================
      Robert K. Peet, Professor & Chair         Phone:  919-962-6942
      Curriculum in Ecology, CB#3275            Fax:    919-962-6930
      University of North Carolina              Cell:   919-368-4971
      Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3275  USA          Email:  peet at unc.edu
                    http://www.unc.edu/depts/ecology/
                  http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
  ======================================================================

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Neal Evenhuis wrote:

> FYI.
>
> From the EDUCAUSE listserve:
>
>
> PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS
> The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is calling on colleges and
> universities to take steps to address what they see as rampant
> copyright abuse by faculty. According to the AAP, faculty who post
> protected content online for use in their courses cost the publishing
> industry at least $20 million each year in lost revenues. Before the
> advent of online reserves, faculty would often place hard-copy
> materials in the library for students to view. That practice has been
> largely replaced by making digital copies of course materials available
> online. The publishing industry objects, saying faculty who do this go
> beyond the scope of fair use. Allan Adler, vice president for legal and
> governmental affairs with AAP, said, "We can't compete with free." The
> organization pointed to a recent agreement with Cornell University in
> which the institution works to educate faculty on appropriate uses of
> copyrighted material and on best practices to avoid infringing uses.
> The AAP hopes that other institutions will implement programs similar
> to the one Cornell has adopted.
> Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 November 2006
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/292898_copyright20.html
>
> -Neal
> -- 
> Dr. Neal L. Evenhuis
> Chairman, Department of Natural Sciences
> Bishop Museum
> 1525 Bernice Street
> Honolulu, Hawaii 96817-2704
>