Why students need the right to copy - The Hindu

"Late last year, leading publishing houses including Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press brought a copyright action against Delhi University and a tiny photocopy shop licensed by it, seeking to restrain them from supplying educational course packs to students. This lawsuit sent shock waves across the academic community, leading more than 300 authors and academics including famed Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen to protest this copyright aggression in an open letter to publishers. Tellingly, 33 of the authors of various books mentioned specifically in the lawsuit (as having been copied in the course packs) signed this protest letter making it clear that they were dissociating themselves from this unfortunate lawsuit. For those not familiar with the term, course packs are compilations of limited excerpts from copyrighted books, put together painstakingly by faculty members in accordance with a carefully designed syllabus and teaching plan.  What makes the lawsuit particularly egregious is the fact that publishers are effectively seeking an outright ban on all course packs, even those that extract and use no more than 10 per cent of the copyrighted book. Under U.S. law, reproducing up to 10 per cent of the copyrighted books is 'fair use' of a copyrighted work, and therefore legal. Given that India is a developing country, with poorer students and more severe educational access constraints, it stands to reason that Indian courts ought to peg this number at 30 per cent or even higher.  Further, the Indian education exception is far wider than its U.S. counterpart. Section 52(1) (a) embodies the 'fair use' exception and permits any fair dealing of a copyrighted work for the purpose of research and private study. In addition, unlike the U.S., Section 52(1)(i) embodies a separate exception, under which it is perfectly legal to reproduce any copyrighted work during the course of educational instruction. These exceptions reflect a clear Parliamentary intention to exempt core aspects of education from the private sphere of copyright infringement. Eviscerating these exceptions at the behest of publishers will strike at the very heart of our constitutional guarantee of a fundamental right to education for all ..."