What an interesting discussion.
I also agree with Fred's sentiments and although I appreciate some
of the points made by Ian Lovecy I have less sympathy with publishers
than he does.
I'm primarily involved in making study packs which are not sold as
separate items to students. Packs which we assemble for the students
(rather than forcing the students to spend long hours at the
photocopying machines themselves).
The points that I'd like to make are that:
1 The CLA does not differentiate in its charges between what it
costs to replicate pages from a 20 year old journal or a
current, in print text. So the charges are not based on economic
loss of revenue.
2 The materials we supply are those that would be accessible free
of charge to students who had the time and patience to stand by
the photocopier. Ie. they do not stand outside the norms of fair
dealing. It is galling when the costs of providing this service
to students costs more for the copyright clearance than the
print charges.
3 Along with Fred I feel incensed to be asked to pay for using
articles written by our own academics when the journals
themselves do not pay for the publication rights in the first
place. These papers are written in time paid for by the
University and according to the norms of the Copyright Act the
University should own the copyright anyway. If as Ian says the
author sees little of the CLA fee then the University sees even
less! There certainly isn't any CLA discount for the University
where the author works.
4 Given the above I think that the issue is one of the underfunded
Universities being expected to carry publishers - or more
specifically the copyright licensing bodies. The amounts of
money swallowed up in the administration of these various
copyright systems is I suspect something of an open drain.
I'd be happy to hear other views.
Chris Pegler
Chris Pegler
DLMBA Manager, Student Services/
WBS Copyright Co-ordinator
Tel: 01203 524215 Fax: 01203 524411
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