Booksellers cry ‘piracy’ over photocopying; threaten action

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 17

Booksellers cry ‘piracy’ over photocopying; threaten action

By

KEN COATES

Book publishers in New Zealand are determined to take the offensive against photocopying of textbooks. They say that in some schools and educational institutions the practice constitutes book piracy and a serious breach of copyright. They are particularly opposed to textbooks being photocopied by teachers to prepare class sets for up to 30 pupils.

The director of the Book Publishers’ Association, Mr Gerard Reid, of Auckland, sees this as piracy. “If a person is copying rather than buying, then he is making the copying machine company wealthy at the expense of the author,” he adds. While lack of a systematic survey makes an accurate estimate of the size of the problem impossible, he says the association has resolved to take a tough line against teachers and lecturers who photocopy in a big way for class use. The association plans to take to court an education institution, one department of which compiled a book for students put together from photocopied extracts from a number of textbooks. Mr Reid is not prepared to name the institution, as he says this would warn it of the action to be taken.

He is not against students photocopying pages of books for private study; indeed this is permitted by the copyright laws. But, he says,

the problem is more widespread than is realised.

The association has, for example, also been in dispute for three years with the Law Society which advertised it would photocopy material from its library and. send it to members who request this service.

Mr Reid says the Copyright Act provides for photocopied material to be used for personal study, but the Law Society obviously intends published extracts to be used by lawyers in the course of their profession. While book publishers reached agreement with the Education Department 2% years ago over limiting photocopying in schools, the department has never imposed the restrictions because teachers’ unions will not comply with them. The agreement provides for limiting the copyright material which can be photocopied, the frequency with which it can be carried out, and placing a ban on its accumulation.

As Gerard Reid sees it, copyright is a measure by which the law provides for a person who has applied mind and creativity to the production of goods; he is entitled to the ownership. He also has the sole right to

determine how the goods are distributed. If someone else reproduced those goods of value■ to the consumer, the author is morally entitled to recompense. Implementing the agreement with the Education Department is a question of persuading teachers to agree, but the department apparently will not force the issue. “We are being too soft,” says Gerard Reid. “Eventually, it will come to us prosecuting individual teachers.”

He says book publishers in New Zealand are also investigating setting up what he terms a print copyright collection society, to overcome what they see as piracy by photocopying. Schools and educating organisations would, under such a scheme, be licensed to photocopy copyright material at a fixed charge per page. The publishers’ association would arrange for collection of fees and for their disbursement to authors and publishers. Similar organisations are being set up in other countries as the result of the increasing use of photocopiers. Australia has a Copyright Agency to monitor copying. Mr Reid says that such an organisation in New Zealand is “still a long way down the road,”

but research into its establishment has begun. “There is no reason why authors should forgo their incomes simply because the technological means to steal exists,” he adds.

After all, he argues, the advent of radio years ago presented the same kind of problem of copyright to the recorded music industry, but the formation of performing rights associations meant that soon regular royalties were being paid by all radio stations which played and broadcast records.

One man who feels strongly about photocopying is Mr D. J. Heap, managing director of Heinemann Publishers (N.Z.), Ltd, a former president of the New Zealand Publishers’ Association-

He says that no-one realises the damages and dangers of the trend to photocopying in educational institutions and libraries. He concedes photocopiers are convenient gadgets widely used but says we have all come to expect to be able to use them without too much thought for the obligations that the machine imposes. “Blatant photocopying, other than for strictly private research and personal usage, is a form of theft cumulatively, a major crime not only against individual authors but also against the viability of a complete industry, and the future of the literary aspect of our society,” he claims. Mr Heap acknowledges that this

might sound extreme, but says the arguments against book piracy, as practised in Singapore where books are reprinted without regard to copyright law, also apply to the theft of literary property through the photocopy machine. He says that it is reported that though Taiwan and Korea currently have a higher turnover in counterfeit software, videos, books, and audio tapes than Singapore, their Governments have expressed the intention to improve the situation.

Singapore, however, has done no such thing and shows every sign of taking over the counterfeit business gradually being shed by Taiwan. Given its influence in the developing world and its otherwise “respectable” image, Singapore’s potential for damage to the whole copyright system is probably unequalled. Mr Heap also cites observations by the British Publishers’ Association’s co-ordinator of the Campaign Against Book Piracy, lan Taylor, who says copyright is a basic human right, recognised in article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This reads:. "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production for which he is the author."