Below is some recent commentary about the Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al. case.
"A Nightmare Scenario for Higher Education" by Kevin Smith. Here's an excerpt:
First, if this injunction were adopted as proposed, it would enjoin everyone at Georgia State, including students, who would seem to largely lose their fair use rights by virtue of enrolling at GSU. It would apply to e-reserves, faculty web pages and any learning management systems in use or adopted in the future. It would make GSU responsible for every conceivable act of copying that took place on their campus. In short, administrators at Georgia State would have to look over the shoulders of each faculty member whenever they uploaded course material to an LMS or any other web page. . . .
Not only would GSU have to micromanage each faculty member’s choices about how to teach every class, they would also have to give the plaintiff publishers access to all of the computer systems on campus so that they too could examine each professor’s decisions.
"The Georgia State Filing—A Declaration of War on the Faculty?" by Paul Courant. Here's an excerpt:
Call me gullible, but even now I am not fully persuaded that academic publishers are the enemies of faculty and the university. However, I do think that something has gone horribly wrong when entities that were created to serve scholarship employ legal procedures that would hamstring scholars and students who engage in customary and effective behaviors in their teaching and learning. I hope that Judge Evans will recognize that the publishers’ proposal is a plain violation of copyright and would be destructive of vital public purposes.
"What's at Stake in the Georgia State Copyright Case." The Chronicle of Higher Education published comments from prominent experts in this article. Here's an excerpt from Dorothea Salo's contribution:
Should a ruling come down that adds so much complication, cost, or risk to provisions about electronic reserves that institutions and their libraries no longer feel safe offering them, faculty and librarians will unite at last in shared outrage on the far shore of the Rubicon.
"Georgia State, Copyright and the Future of Higher Education" by Tracy Mitrano. Here's an excerpt:
We need senior leadership in our institutions, guided by national associations, to pull that campus radical of the 1960's out of the suits and high heels we now don and get serious about a direction of change that preserves us.
"The Georgia State University Lawsuit Injunction: Back to the Future" by Peggy Hoon. Here's an excerpt:
However, this proposed injunction is so onerous, so intrusive, so far-reaching, and so incompatible with the reality of teaching and learning in the 21st century, that simply widely publicizing the existence of and contents of the proposed injunction may well achieve what the library community has been trying to do for the last twenty years.
**WAKE UP THE FACULTY AND MOBILIZE THEM TO RECLAIM CONTROL OF THEIR OWN WORKS OF AUTHORSHIP AND THEIR OWN SYSTEM OF SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION.**
This injunction is your fuel—now LIGHT that fire!
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