AAP and the CCC

From: Leah Gadzikowski <lrgadz01[_at_]gwise.louisville.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 10:32:10 -0500

I received this message in e-mail this morning. Have any of you heard of this or had experience with this?

Leah

Leah Gadzikowski
<lrgadz01[_at_]gwise.louisville.edu>

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Hi Friends -- Just wanted to ask you if you know about threatening letters that are being mailed to organizations on the letterhead of the Copyright Clearance Center?

I visited a hospital in Illinois yesterday. They showed me correspondence between the hospital and the Copyright Clearance Center. The initial "invitation" to have a copying site license for this medium-sized hospital was sent to their Risk Manager. The hospital initially refused the offer, saying they didn't need this type of license. They then received a letter from the CCC suggesting they were in danger of being sued by publishers if they did not purchase a copying site license. It was determined through a week-long copying survey done at the hospital that they needed to pay $18,000 to cover their copyright fees for one year. This agreement has nothing to do with the hospital library. It is supposed to cover copying of articles handed out in staff meetings, etc. I can't imagine a hospital this size (around 400 beds) would really owe this much money if they counted articles they copied, and paid fees based on the actual count. Evidently the hospital was intimidated enough by the threat to sign this license and fork over the money. Another interesting thing -- next year the hospitals' fees are supposed to drop (why?) -- but the fees still will be over $15,000.

I have heard also that people actually from AAP are coming into university libraries and talking with low-level staff doing interlibrary loans. The staff are being asked to point out copyright violations to these unannounced "site visitors". Sharon Hogan, the University Librarian here at UIC assures me that ARL is trying to do something about this. It appears that the real impetus behind these tactics (under the guise of the CCC) is the AAP, and that they have been picking up steam because of the Texaco case.

I am wondering if you have heard of other hospitals that are being targeted? Has your library been a target? What do you think we as a group of medical libraries and librarians should do about this?

I would be happy to summarize for the group, if there is interest in this topic.

Thank you very much.

Jean

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Jean Sayre
Associate Director
NN/LM Greater Midwest Region
Library of the Health Sciences M/C 763
1750 W. Polk Street
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 60612
1-800-338-7657
312-996-2464
312-996-2226--Fax
jwsayre[_at_]uic.edu
http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/gmr/

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Received on Tue Feb 23 1999 - 15:34:27 GMT