Re: copyright under stress

Hello.

I always lurk and when I feel a need to reply to something, I do so by writing personally to the poster. I did this with Mr. Cumbow and he kindly wrote back and suggested that I post to the list what I wrote to him.

On Mon, Jun 12, 2000, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
>
> I'd be interested in seeing concrete examples of situations in which
> copyright causes denial of access.

In my view and in my experiences here at Ball State, I can relate that dealing with permission for transmitting audio/visual materials for distance education [Section 110 (2) of Our Copyright Law] causes denial of access. How? By the copyright owner either totally denying our request for the transmission or placing such a high licensing fee for the transmission that we, as a public institution, cannot afford the cost. Effect: on-campus students get to view the audio/visual material in class; the off-campus students do not. That's denial of access in my view -- admittedly, a non-lawyerly view.

One concrete example [a classic horror story that I reiterate whenever I can]. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development has the rights for 19 curriculum videos we wanted to use for a graduate course for in-the-field teachers. Total cost for transmitting these 19 videos: $27,271.00. Obviously for a course with 30 remote students, this cost was prohibitive and confiscatory...unless, of course, we wanted to raise class fees $900 per remote student ;-)

Yeah, I know, you might say this is a licensing issue, but nonetheless, our 30 remote, off-campus students were denied access to these curriculum videos because of Section 110(2). This concrete example and others were part of my testimony I gave in Chicago when the U.S. Register of Copyrights held her hearings for her May 1999 Report as per the DMCA.

By the by, to be fair and truthful, we do license transmission fees at prices we can afford. It always seems, however, that the more critical videos for class development and enhancement are those that are either denied or are cost prohibitive.

Fritz

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Dr. Fritz Dolak
Copyright & Electronic Resources
University Libraries
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[p] 765-285-5330
[f] 765-285-2644
http://www.bsu.edu/classes/dolak Received on Wed Jun 14 2000 - 16:19:09 GMT