HDCP break and DMCA

Harmon Seaver hseaver at cybershamanix.com
Mon Nov 26 10:31:08 PST 2001


     Kinko's got sued over selling the "student packets", there was a
big flap over it a few years ago in academia, but as I recall the end
result was that professors are more careful to have written permission
from the publishers in hand, and the packets are still being sold.
    Most publishers are cooperating -- it's simply that the material is
in the library, the portions of the books used is not large enough that
students would buy them anyway -- as opposed to actual "textbooks" that
they do purchase, so it seems a reasonable "fair use" compromise. In
most of these cases the publishers realizer that they aren't going to
sell more books by refusing, the authors realize that they'll get more
exposure, more recognition, and the students don't have to spend hours
in the library waiting for someone else to finish copying the materials.

    But as I said, most professors are being much more careful about
getting permission beforehand and most copy places are being more
careful about what they sell.
   At the biomedical library I worked at, the copiers only worked if you
had a special card, and only students and faculty had the cards, since
copying the medical texts and selling them to law firms and clinics
was/is a lucrative business and was a principal income for the library.
Don't know how the DMCA has affected them.

--
Harmon Seaver
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com





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