Photocopying Textbooks Is Fair Use In India: Western Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University
from the let's-celebrate-a-rare-win-for-the-public dept
Back in September last year, Mike wrote about the remarkable court ruling in India that copyright is not inevitable, divine or a natural right. As we have been reporting since 2013, the case in question was brought by three big Western publishers against Delhi University and a photocopy shop over "course packs" -- bound collections of photocopied extracts from books and journals that are sold more cheaply than the sources. Although the High Court of Delhi ruled that photocopying textbooks in this way is fair use, that was not necessarily the end of the story: the publishers might have appealed to India's Supreme Court. But as the Spicy IP site reports, they didn't:
In a stunning development, OUP, CUP and Taylor & Francis just withdrew their copyright law suit filed against Delhi University (and its photocopier, Rameshwari) 5 years ago! They indicated this to the Delhi high court in a short and succinct filing made this morning.
This withdrawal brings to an end one of the most hotly contested IP battles ever, pitting as it did multinational publishers against academics and students.
The Spicy IP post has a useful short timeline of the case, as well as a link to the site's extremely detailed coverage of all the twists and turns of the saga, which is now finally -- and definitively -- over. Importantly, the case was:
one that ultimately tested the bounds of copyright law in India. And clarified that while educational photocopying is permissible, there are limits to this as well. And that any copying must comport closely with the intended purpose ("in the course of instruction"). In that sense, publishers have made some gains in at least ensuring that a complete free for all regime is not what is intended by the law. But a circumspect one, where the copying has to fall within the bounds of the educational exception.
Overall, this is a huge victory for educational access and public interest in India. And very welcome in a world that was witnessing a rather one sided ratcheting up of IP norms, at the cost of all else!
That's an important point. So often it seems that copyright only ever gets longer and stronger, with the public always on the losing side. The latest news from India shows that very occasionally, it's the public that wins.
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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, india, photocopying, textbooks
Companies: cambridge university press, cup, delhi university, oup, oxford university press, rameshwari, taylor & francis
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Suspicious behaviour from IP-maximalists
After all, IP maximalists will never accept defeat.
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If a book, or all relevant parts of it, can be freely copied and sold by third parties, what incentives are there for publishers to make and publish textbooks?
Textbooks might be overpriced and all that, but in the long run why would anybody bother to invest in making and publishing a book if it'll just be photocopied by somebody else?
Of course, as long as this is limited to India only, they can "pirate" all the foreign books they want, but there won't be any domestic textbooks after a while. All local authors will demand payment in full up front, as that'll be all the money they ever see. This will cut down on the number of local textbooks as there will only be so many institutions that can afford to front the money to write a book.
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You might have a point if the only reason that professors wrote textbooks was to make money and if they actually ever saw any of that money. Right now the only people making money off of text books are the publishers. So the only real down side to this ruling is that textbooks in India will likely be spiral bound instead of having the nice hardback bindings publishers put on in an effort to justify the prices.
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There are incentives other than money to write books. And in fact, from my academic experience, one is much more willing to share their work than to keep it locked.
Your apocalyptic scenario hasn't happened so far even though copying and libraries are rampant. Why would it happen now?
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Or writing a textbook could be seen as a loss-leader.
Even if you don't make much money directly from the textbook, I'm pretty sure a lecturer being able to say "I literally wrote the textbook on " would make them a highly sought-after teacher. They could pick and choose the teaching positions, and it would be a leg-up on getting tenure too.
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A good lecturer has a better option, it is called YouTube. That also save them from repeating the lecture, unless they need to change the information in it. Their avenues for income are possibly selling ebooks, but more usefully selling selling personal attention as tutorials etc. Lab time is also a sellable commodity.
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Very little, as most students cannot afford to buy all the source books that they are gaining copies of pages from. The textbook market is a case of where the publishers, (and not the authors), are squeezing their target market too hard for it to be sustainable. The replacement for the publishers, and with greater flexibility, already exists, and it takes he form of a GIT repository.
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Ideally, there would be a compulsory license like in music so that professors could build their own textbooks affordably. This decision appears to have some significant risk built into it.
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what's a great place to learn russian? i want to get a jump on this.
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I also find it funny that you support a big business that sells stolen content. They are doing the same as publishers but they don't even create the content.
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And universities are not in the business of selling content. Neither are publishers responsible for creating the contents they print; someone else wrote it.
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http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/06/canadian-textbook-publishers-copyright-law/
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