Since Alto's Digital Publishing product incorporates a wizard for automating access to the Copyright Clearance Center, we feel some obligation to comment on the recent revelations of CCC's involvement in funding a lawsuit against university libraries. See recent blog entries here and here, to get more background on the issue.
It has always been our goal to make it easier for our users to access CCC's online process. It's all about saving time and ultimately money. We see CCC's role as a facilitator of access to requested and useful content in support of the classroom teaching mission. Students clearly cannot afford to purchase original complete publications for often dozens of works which the professor wishes to incorporate into the class content. Having access to affordable portions of many collected sources into a coursepack is a very workable model. In this model of doing things there are multiple stakeholders. CCC has provided an important service in connecting the users (libraries, bookstores, teachers, students) with the publishers in such a way that both sides achieve some advantage in the relationship. The "tit for tat" is supposed to be that the publishers get paid a reasonable royalty for use of selected parts of their publications and the students have access to the professor's preferred content based on the same reasonable royalties. If CCC can keep the publishers' trust that they are managing the usage side and the libraries and students can trust CCC to negotiate affordable royalties on their behalf, then all parties should see the merits of this arrangement. CCC obviously survives as a business based on fees and a portion of collected royalties. So they, no doubt, have an interest in a high level of compliance with the copyright laws. I don't think they've ever tried to conceal that aspect of their business model.
Because the lawsuit relates to the question of "fair use," CCC clearly has an interest in it. And there is no doubt any further clarification of how to apply the fair use provisions of copyright law is definitely needed. After all there are about as many opinions on what fair use means as there are people who've ever thought about it. If this lawsuit can help clarify how to make CCC's facilitation business model work better for all parties, then good for it. It does unfortunately make CCC look like they're taking sides in favor of the publishers. Several questions come to mind. Would the publishers have pursued the case without CCC's support? Are both publishers and CCC losing revenue because of over use of the fair use provisions? If the relatively low cost of royalty-based usage in coursepacks and library e-reserve systems is indeed more favorable than the other legal alternatives, why wouldn't the libraries support this model? Are the libraries' current practices truly consistent with conventional fair use exclusions? We look forward to seeing how the court decides this case.
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