Re: Academics and coursepacks

On 7/07/98, Michael Scarpitti <mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org> wrote:
>
> If [a] professor is teaching a Shakespeare class, and [...] he uses
> the new Oxford Shakespeare (ed. by Wells?) and simply photocopies a
> play or two for a class of 200, we have a serious problem [...]
> For the prof to refuse to ask permission is outright arrogant
> thievery.

If I have bought a copy of your book of public-domain information, surely I've adequately compensated you for the making of it, and can therefore do with it as I choose. Certainly, when I buy furniture, or clothing, or household appliances, the designer has been paid an hourly wage or annual salary for her efforts, and the manufacturer has no further right to tell me what I can or cannot do with his product based on the "creativity" or even "sweat of the brow" inherent in that design. Why should it be different for the designers or publishers of books of public domain material?

Obviously, the existence of photocopiers reduces the publishers' potential market, but is this a good reason to grant them special rights to control the use of public domain information? By those rules, we'd have to extend copyright to all material products if we ever invented matter-duplicators, which is absurd. Why not let the market decide the availability of public domain material?

What you're describing as "outright arrogant thievery" may be technically illegal in the US, but I'd really like to know why you believe it's _immoral_ too.

CYa,
JEREMY Jeremy G. Byrne
<jeremy[_at_]iz.org> Received on Wed Jul 08 1998 - 14:58:40 GMT