Universities Are Vast Copy Machines—and That's a Good Thing - The Conversation - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Universities are and have always been vast copy machines. Evolved from medieval monasteries and their vast libraries and scriptoria, universities have always had as central functions of their mission the copying, transforming, and preserving works of art, thought, and science and making them available to their patrons. More recently, universities have found cause to make copies of books, articles, films, photographs, maps, and other materials in forms easily accessible to students through electronic reserves or course-management systems. In one of the most exciting recent copying projects, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has led a consortium called HathiTrust Digital Library that includes Cornell and Indiana Universities and the Universities of California, and Wisconsin at Madison. The consortium provides a vast online catalog of works scanned via Google Books, with full-text search capabilities. Most important, it allows sight-impaired readers to access and search the entire text of millions of works. On Wednesday a federal judge ruled in favor of the trust and its university partners in a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and other groups. In his ruling, the judge said that the trust’s handling of the scanned works falls 'safely within the provision of fair use.' And, he wrote: 'I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses made' by the project. And back in May, a federal judge ruled in favor of Georgia State University’s practice of making digital copies of books available through electronic reserves. In October 2011, a judge dismissed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against the University of California at Los Angeles over streaming videos online for courses... I would go further and assert that these cases strengthen the claim that universities and their libraries have a special place in copyright law because they have a special place in society. Courts and even Congress have long acknowledged the essential role of copying in the educational process. That’s why the preamble to the section of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act that outlines 'fair use' specifies 'teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research' as examples of 'fair uses'—uses that, although they involve the copying of protected material, are considered noninfringing because they enable essential public goods... I would go further and assert that these cases strengthen the claim that universities and their libraries have a special place in copyright law because they have a special place in society. Courts and even Congress have long acknowledged the essential role of copying in the educational process. That’s why the preamble to the section of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act that outlines “fair use” specifies 'teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research' as examples of 'fair uses'—uses that, although they involve the copying of protected material, are considered noninfringing because they enable essential public goods... It’s important to note that in ruling in favor of the consortium and it’s 'transformative uses' of copying, Judge Harold Baer Jr. did not rule that all scanning for all purposes by universities should be considered fair use. The trust’s particular uses are considered transformative and thus fair. Baer accepted almost verbatim the arguments that a group of digital-humanities and law scholars made in an amicus brief submitted to the court. When scholars can clearly and proudly explain the value of their work, it’s possible to sway policy and law... We have also likely seen the end of the long drama over the legality of Google’s book-scanning efforts, with the Association of American Publishers’ settlement of its eight-year lawsuit against the company...  I have written many times over the years that I am dubious of the strength of Google’s argument, and nothing in either the settlement news or the HathiTrust case has undermined my conclusion.  It’s important that Congress, the courts, and the rest of us remember that fair use is designed for just the sort of transformative, beneficial public services that universities and their libraries provide. That’s why Hathi and the universities won so clearly this week (although this case could be appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals).  Google is not a library. It is not a university. It is not a public service. It is a business. Too often we forget those distinctions..."