Copyright Center Will Let Colleges Pay Blanket Fees to Reuse Printed Material

The Chronicle : By BROCK READ

The Copyright Clearance Center, a nonprofit group that manages licenses for the reuse of published material, has created an annual copyright license for colleges, the center plans to announce on Monday.

The license will let institutions pay a blanket fee to use copyrighted material instead of having to secure the rights to such content on a case-by-case basis.

The blanket fee will make it easier for professors and librarians to place articles and book excerpts in course packets, in electronic reserves, and on course Web sites, officials at the copyright center said.

Under the center's current "pay per use" system, colleges must individually acquire the rights for every use of copyrighted content not covered by fair-use doctrine. That system has left many campus librarians inundated with copyright requests, said Tim Bowen, a product-marketing manager for the center.

But institutions that pay for the new license will be able to take a "click and go" approach to securing reuse rights, he said. Officials at those colleges will need only to check the center's Web site to determine whether an article or book is available under the license. If the material is covered, professors can reuse it for any number of academic purposes through the rest of the academic year....

The annual fee will not eliminate pay-per-use transactions altogether because many publishing houses have not agreed to put their works under the license. But about 180 publishers -- including Springer Science & Business Media, John Wiley & Sons, The New York Times, and Oxford University Press -- have already signed on with the project. "We're hoping that, in some time, this will cover 80 percent of universities' needs," Mr. Bowen said....

But some librarians are ambivalent about blanket licenses, Mr. Rehbach said, because they fear that colleges will pay for copyright licenses instead of asserting their rights under fair-use doctrine. "We debate back and forth whether this is the best model for us," he said. "As we move toward more licensed products, are we giving up basic rights under the law?" ...