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Publishers Take Aim At College-Town Copy Shops Over Copyrights

(INDIANAPOLIS, July 31st, 2003, 3 p.m.) -- Forget tackling teenagers who lift tunes off the Internet. Some of the nation's biggest publishing companies are, instead, going after college-town copy shops they say are copyright infringers damaging their industry the old-fashioned way, a few nickels at a time.

Since October, major publishers have banded together to sue copy shops in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Texas for failing to pay copyright fees. All were accused of photocopying book excerpts or articles without permission for coursepacks bought by college students.

Publishers say those lawsuits are just the beginning.

"These violations aren't just isolated cases, and there's a real campaign to do these lawsuits on a national basis," said Mark Seeley, vice president and general counsel for the publishing company Elsevier. "It's an old technology, photocopying, but it has such a strong analogy to what you can do on the Internet."

None of the copy shops that have been sued will discuss the lawsuits. Most were settled, though at least two remain in litigation, including one filed in July against Collegiate Copies in Bloomington, which serves Indiana University students.

The owner of Collegiate Copies did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment, but the owner of another local copy shop questioned why anyone would enter the coursepack business in the first place.

In 1991, publishers won a copyright lawsuit against Kinkos, scaring many shops out of the coursepack business.

"Kinkos was doing this on a big-time scale. We went to a couple of seminars and this was being touted as a way to make money," said Keith Hamm, owner of the White Rabbit copy shop in Bloomington. "Then Kinkos got nailed, and we thought, 'With their resources, if they can't do it, then we have no business in it."'

Now copy shops that decided otherwise are the target, and they are being turned in by their competitors, said Bob Weiner, vice president for licensing at the Copyright Clearance Center. The nonprofit business acts as the licensing agent for publishers and helped coordinate the lawsuits.

"We receive complaints, and in many cases evidence, from competitors of the folks whom we've coordinated suits against," Weiner said. "It isn't a question of going after small copy shops. It's a question of educating people. You've got to pay for the things you use."

Roy Kaufman, associate general counsel at publisher John Wiley & Sons, said the number of lawsuits was growing.

"There's a lot of copy shops out there who are paying copyright fees, and they have been, quite frankly, hammered by those who aren't complying," Kaufman said. "And as a collective thing, if compliance improves overall, it's better for the industry, it's better for the authors."

Members of Printimage International, a trade organization for copy shops, receive a discount with the Copyright Clearance Center, where copyright permission fees can range from tens to hundreds of dollars. But that might not be enough, said Steven Johnson, the group's president and CEO.

"All of the fees and regulations small businesses have to pay start to add up, but it's not OK to violate those that you don't agree with," Johnson said. "Obviously, there must be more of a need to educate them even more."

And that is the point of the lawsuits -- much like those the music industry is filing against computer users who illegally share music files over the Internet, Seeley said.

"Thankfully, 16-year-old teenage hackers are not that interested in scientific articles. But there is a broader picture," he said. "I think if we can really remind people what the basic rules are, for those folks interested in scientific, medical and research articles, then perhaps teenagers interested in a song will learn as well."

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)