Re: Florida Pre-paid v. College Savings Bank

On Wed, 07 Jul 1999, Sam Byassee <sam_byassee[_at_]shmm.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 06 Jul 1999, John R. Allison <allisonj[_at_]mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/4/99, Alan Kabat <alankabat[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > "This ruling is likely to have serious repercussions in such areas as
> > > copyright law, where state universities, now chafing under expanded
> > > copyright protection, might decide to copy and distribute to students
> > > whatever literature they wish, ignoring the copyright laws but safe
> > > in the knowledge that they cannot be sued." (S. Sherry, "Some Targets
> > > Were Larger Than Others," Wash. Post., July 4, 1999, at B-4).
> >
> > Won't happen. Very few universities want the reputation of being
> > thieves, even thieves with immunity. Moreover, if it becomes a
> > problem
>
> Although it's doubtful that such activity will become official
> university policy, by the time news about these opinions filters
> down generally to faculty members, I expect the (inaccurate) gloss
> on the holdings simply will be that "states (and state entities)
> cannot be held liable for copyright infringement." As a result,
> individual faculty members will copy, or encourage students to copy,
> without regard to copyright law.

     Wouldn't this be very foolish of them to do, given that the cases provide NO immunity at all for professors or students? We may indeed see more copying, but only if College Savings is misunderstood. And also remember under Alden that a University President or Head of a Board of Regents is still subject to injunctive relief under Ex Parte Young if institutions they control continually violate federal law.

     I'll add, in response to a section of the above message I deleted, that the professors disparaged have a strong argument that most of their copying is valid under the fair use doctrine. Remember that the courts in both the Kinko's case and the Michigan Document Services cases made clear that the fair use analysis would be different if Professors were plaintiffs rather than for-profit copyshops.

     Cheers,

     Paul

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Professor Paul J. Heald
University of Georgia
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