In early July, after the monsoon rains have washed away the last of an oppressive heat, students and their parents arrive in droves here at the University of Delhi to begin the academic year. It is a busy time for the roadside markets and other businesses near the campus, when they earn most of their annual income from sales of tea, snacks, T-shirts, and, most important, course packs.
But this year, confusion and unease pervade the dozens of photocopy shops that produce the packs, which include a semester’s worth of reading material from various textbooks and academic journals. That’s because one of their own, Rameshwari Photocopy Services, is at the center of a legal fight that has gained international attention.
Three of the world’s biggest academic publishers—Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Taylor & Francis—are suing Rameshwari and the university for producing thousands of bound course packs a year. They claim that the course packs violate various copyrights, hurt their bottom lines, and reduce residual payments to the academics in India, the United States, and elsewhere whose work is being copied.
But the publishers’ move has drawn widespread criticism among professors and students in India. They say this kind of photocopying not only is entirely within the law, but also is essential for education in a developing country where students can barely afford one textbook, let alone dozens for each class.
Indeed, the opponents’ portrayal of wealthy, Western publishers trying to wring funds from poor Indian students has helped trigger a global outcry. Last year Amartya Sen, the Harvard economist and Nobel laureate, sent a letter asking the Oxford press, which publishes his work, to abandon the lawsuit. In March a similar letter to all three presses came from more than 300 academics and authors from around the world—33 of whom the publishers name in the suit as victims of copyright infringement.
“As authors and educators, we would like to place on record our distress at this act of the publishers, as we recognize the fact that in a country like India marked by sharp economic inequalities, it is often not possible for every student to obtain a personal copy of a book,” the letter said.
Of course, legal battles over course packs and copyrights are not new to academe. In the United States, for example, a closely watched case brought by Cambridge, Oxford, and SAGE Publications against Georgia State University is working its way through the U.S. court system. The publishers assert that the university committed widespread copyright violations when it allowed some of their content to be used, unlicensed, in electronic reserves.
The Rameshwari Photocopy case touches on some of the same issues but may have broader implications for the country’s universities, where photocopying has long been standard operating procedure.
It’s been a student tradition in India for decades: Look through a syllabus and head off to the copy shop to get a course pack. Indian professors as well as students argue that the packets are integral to university education.
“If I have to teach a subject, I design a very elaborate teaching plan, the aim of that being that I need to expose my students to and have them thinking critically about several key themes and topics through a wide diversity of reading,” says Shamnad Basheer, a professor of intellectual-property law at Kolkata’s National University of Juridical Sciences. “These are not textbooks. These are short extracts of books and several different books. They in no way affect the market of the main books.”
‘It’s the Law of the Land’
But the publishers claim that course packs are in violation of India’s Copyright Act of 1957, which gives copyright holders exclusive rights over reproduction of the material. They do not intend to deny Indian students the texts needed for their education, they insist, arguing that universities can pay an annual licensing fee that would allow for limited reproduction of the covered publications.
“It’s the law of the land that photocopying for commercial purposes is not desirable, because it’s not fair to stakeholders concerned,” says Sudhir Malhotra, president of the Federation of Indian Publishers, which represents the Indian branches of the three plaintiffs. The photocopy shop, by selling course packs, is engaging in commercial activity, he says.
“Yes, we recognize that students do need to photocopy certain educational material, and they need to do it easily, quickly, and as inexpensively as possible,” Mr. Malhotra says. “All we are saying is that [copy shops and universities] should take a license. It’s a question of legal compliance. If a radio station wants to broadcast music, a song, it takes a license from the music society. That’s it.”
Last year the federation endorsed a plan by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation, which grants literary copyright licenses, to provide licenses to universities that want to be able to reproduce the works of publishers that work with the rights group. This year, some Indian universities signed up.
But many academics argue that the publishers are overlooking the fact that Indian copyright law has a fair-use clause and an education exemption.
Satish Deshpande, a sociology professor at Delhi, says the publishers want the courts to essentially rewrite the law.
“I think this case is a very deliberate ‘test’ case on the part of the publishers,” he says. “They’re not really interested in the specifics of this particular case, but they want to use it as an example, and, in a sense, they want to use it to reinterpret the copyright law in a way that will suit their interests better than the letter of the law now seems to.”
Mr. Malhotra, of the publishers’ federation, denies that they have any motive other than to honor the letter of the law.
Other academics take issue with the licensing fees that universities would have to pay if they signed an agreement with the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization.
Mr. Basheer, the professor of intellectual-property law, says that the fees, which vary depending on the university, may seem low but would very likely increase over time, and that universities would pass the expense on to students themselves.
“Once you sign up to a license,” he says, “you have accepted that you need to take a license. And then you’re at their mercy.”
A decision in the court case is not expected for years. But in the interim, the rift it has created between Indian academe and the publishers may widen.
Says Mr. Deshpande, the sociologist: “The manner in which it was launched as a punitive, high-profile case has incensed us.”