An interesting case here in India about whether students can patronise a photocopying shop which produces pages of textbooks. The decision is that the students may indeed do so - in seeming violation of the more normal copyright rules. However, the logic they use to get to this decision seems about right. In essence, the students never were going to buy the books therefore the photocopying isn't reducing the sales of the books - thus it's OK. This gets to the heart of what copyright is about in an economic sense. Yes, sure, there is this thing called intellectual property. But that isn't, as the court says, some divine right akin to ownership of real property. Rather, it's an attempt to solve a specific problem. And given that copyright, like any other intellectual property, should be supported only up to a point. The point at which it solves our original problem of course.
Thus I regard this as the correct decision:
NEW DELHI: Observing that "copyright is not a divine right", the Delhi high court on Friday allowed Delhi University to issue photocopies of major textbooks published by leading publishers.
The Justice held that the act of students getting books copied from DU's library or its authorised photocopy shop enjoys protection under Section 52 of the Copyright Act, which exempts education from copyright infringement.
That's the legal part - the library is allowed to photocopy under the education exemption thus the contractor can do so under the same exemption.
In November 2012, the court had banned the iconic Rameshwari Photocopy Service located near the Delhi School for Economics in north campus on a petition moved by publishers including University Press, Cambridge University Press and
Taylor & Francis.The international publishing giants had alleged that the kiosk was violating their copyright and “at the instance of Delhi University” was causing huge financial losses as students stopped buying their text books.
It's that huge financial loss which is the economic point. And the court gets this right I think:
The court said that photocopying of the relevant pages of the books have only relieved the students from spending days in the library noting down pages after pages of the relevant chapters.
It said: "When modern technology is available for comfort, it would be unfair to say that the students should not avail thereof and continue to study as in ancient era."
The court added that even clicking photos of the pages of the books by students for use later would also "qualify as fair use".
"The students can never be expected to buy all the books, different portions whereof are prescribed as suggested reading and can never be said to be the potential customers of the plaintiffs," said the court.
If the students never would buy the books anyway then the photocopying cannot be said to cause a loss for the publishers.
Our basic economic problem here is one of public goods. These are things which are non-rivalrous (my using them doesn't diminish the amount available for others) and non-excludable (we can't physically prevent someone from using them). Inventions, designs, and yes the ordering of words on a page, all come under this sort of heading. They're expensive to develop and yet trivially easy to copy. This gives us a problem - if we can't stop people from copying them then how do the people who spent the money to develop them make a profit? And if they don't make a profit then fewer people will do less innovation, invention, design and ordering words on a page. This would be bad, make us sad.
The solution is to protect by law such intellectual property - through patents and copyrights. But note that we are not saying that anyone has a divine right to be paid for their words. We are saying that we want people to make money from doing so so that they continue to do so. The protection should thus always be subject to an economic test. Will protecting this particular use increase the revenue from the production?
This is much larger than textbooks of course. Imagine someone with a computer operating system that costs $400 (say, oooh,
This is not logic that Microsoft nor any of the other IP producers like. But it is entirely reasonable economic logic. And it's that which the court has used here. The students never will buy the books themselves. Thus there is no harm from the photocopying - thus it should be allowed.
