THE copying of documents without the permission of their original owners is an old and ignoble tradition. According to the Irish Copyright Licensing Association, its Irish roots can be traced at least as far back as St Colmcille who, in around 560 AD, borrowed a book of the Gospels from St Finnian of Maigh Bhile and secretly copied it.
Finnian was none too impressed when he found out and promptly demanded the return of both the book and the copy, arguing that the copy was his as well.
In the end, the matter was referred to the High King, Diarmaid Mac Cearrbheoil, for judgement. "Le gach bo a boinin, agus le gach leabhar a choip," he decided. "To every cow her calf and to every book its copy.
In modern terms, this means that the ultimate ownership reverts back to the originator and that a photocopy will cost you, thank you.
At third level, photocopying is one of the arts of survival. With college libraries underfunded and frequently unable to provide multiple copies of course books and academic journals, both students and staff have frequent recourse to the photocopier.
The problem with this culture of copying is that those who do it may well be breaching the copyright laws, leaving themselves and their institutions open to legal action and potentially expensive damages.
Under the Copyright Act, copying is limited to purposes of "research" and "private study" so, for example, only individual students copying for their own purposes would be covered by statute against infringement of copyright.
Unfortunately, there has been a fairly liberal interpretation of what precisely is entailed by research and private study.
While librarians are particularly aware of copyright, the ICLA believes that academics have a more liberal attitude towards photocopying, possibly in the errant belief that copying for the purposes of instruction is not an infringement of copyright or, equally possibly, believing that no one is going to find out any way and, well, times are tough. The ICLA begs to differ and is prepared to take legal action against third level institutions which infringe copyright.
According to the ICLA, only two institutions in this country (one RTC and one teacher training college) appeared to have licences before the ICLA licence reminder appeared this month.
"We would say that the multiple copying that happens in a library, such as copying from academic reviews or chapters of books, is an infringement of copyright," says Muireann O Briain, advisor to the ICLA.
"The test is whether it would affect the commercial interests of the author. If it interferes with the normal exploitation of the work, then it's an infringement of copyright."
The ICLA, which already licences primary and second level schools to photocopy copyright material has now offered similar licences to third level institutions at the rate of £1 per full time student per annum, generating almost £100,000 per year for authors and publishers since the ICLA is non profit making and divides the proceeds equally between them.
Under the licence, staff, students and library workers will be able to make multiple copies of limited extracts without infringing copyright. The new licence will permit copying for distribution among a class or tutorial, or will allow a library to make a copy of a particularly "in demand" article to hold for multiple users. The ICLA believes that the fee should come from the £150 services charge currently levied on students, rather than from already overstretched library funds.
In the UK, a copyright licence of this kind costs over £4 per student and an increase is currently being sought, so the ICLA believes that it is being fairly restrained in asking for £1 per student in this country.
Colleges who pay up this year will have the fee frozen at its current level for four years. Those who do not face a higher fee and, quite possibly, legal action, says O Briain: "If they are caught, if we get a complaint from a publisher, or any member of the college community, then we will commence legal proceedings". You have been warned.
