Copyright is not a divine right

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

10 pointscolinprince4 comments

In Australia, we had a High Court case in the 1970s[1] in which a university library was declared to have authorised copyright infringement by providing coin-operated photocopiers and taking no steps to prevent infringements.

To have a university openly producing and selling photocopies is (pardon the pun) a completely foreign idea to me. Does the university merely cover its costs (education motive) or make a profit on the copies (commercial motive)?

I'd be willing to make an uninformed bet that most of the photocopied books have non-Indian authors, and that pressure to change the laws will start when Indian authors start having their works copied – the same way that America routinely ignored piracy of foreign authors until the likes of Mark Twain began complaining about Canadian piracies of their own works.[2]

[1]http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1975/26.html [2]http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html

Well, it's restricted to educational uses, so I don't anticipate a lot of pressure from Indian textbook authors on this one. The specific case seems to stem from professors suggesting students read various sections of different texts and the copying service preparing collections of those reading assignments for various courses.

It's a broader interpretation than the US version of Fair Use, obviously, but it seems to me the High Court judge had a good point that copyright must serve the public's interests as well as the publisher's.

> The specific case seems to stem from professors suggesting students read various sections of different texts and the copying service preparing collections of those reading assignments for various courses.

Actually, in Australia universities are permitted to do the same thing, as long as it's not the whole book (e.g. a chapter relevant to the week's lecture). So that seems more understandable than photocopying entire books.

This usually comes up regarding books that are expensive for Indian students to purchase. Students, on the other hand, have no issues with buying "eastern economy editions" made by several publishers for sale only in India and select few countries (uses cheaper paper, B&w versus glossy colour prints).

Textbooks by Indian authors are considerably cheaper than their counterparts and availability is likely the only reason for photocopying. I recall that in high school, my friends and I all owned copies of the same math and physics books.

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