James Scotton, associate professor in the College of Communication, said the university specified this year that professors are no longer allowed to have more than 10 percent of their total course content posted on E-Reserve.,”Marquette is in the process of changing its policy on how professors utilize Electronic Reserve for classroom use to avoid taking heat from publishers over possible copyright violations, according to a media law professor.

James Scotton, associate professor in the College of Communication, said the university specified this year that professors are no longer allowed to have more than 10 percent of their total course content posted on E-Reserve. He said publishers may have accused the university of copyright violations from excessive use, which could have in turn given rise to the new policy.

E-Reserve is an electronic version of photocopied materials that students can access on the library's Web site.

"I think the publishers see themselves losing a lot of money because of E-Reserves and other university policies that in effect copy their copyrighted material for free," Scotton said.

He said Janice Simmons-Welburn, dean of University Libraries, made a presentation about the change in the E-Reserve policy to the College of Communication faculty Friday.

Scotton said Simmons-Welburn told faculty present at the meeting that Marquette is included with about eight or nine other colleges and universities accused of violating fair use. Scotton said publishers contacted the university about the violation.

"My purpose for meeting with people is to make sure the faculty understands our current guidelines," Simmons-Welburn said. She said the library is currently trying to improve its process.

Simmons-Welburn said there is no lawsuit and that after reviewing policies and procedures affecting library operations she discovered that the E-Reserve policy needed updating to fully comply with U.S. copyright guidelines.

"Publishers always have a concern about anything to do with libraries," Simmons-Welburn said.

Scotton said professors are awaiting the new policy hopefully for the spring semester.

Bruce Boyden, assistant professor of law, said the question that arises when universities use photocopying or electronic resources to post copyrighted material is whether their actions can be considered fair use as opposed to violation of copyright law.

Fair use allows teachers and professors to legally distribute portions of copyrighted material to their classes for educational purposes.

In a legal sense, Boyden said Marquette's situation either needs to be a case of fair use or the university has to have permission from the copyright holder.

"It can be difficult to draw the line when something is infringement and when it is fair use," Boyden said. He said to his knowledge, fair use of electronic materials has never been tested in court.

According to Boyden, publishers usually first send a letter to a university indicating that they feel the university is violating copyright laws. Boyden said there would usually be no lawsuit if the university in question abided by the publishers' requests.

Boyden said most publishers try to avoid suing universities for such violations because lawsuits are so expensive. If a publisher does decide to sue for copyright infringement, he said it could seek money damages and a court order forcing the violator to change policies.

The difficulty is that the rules of fair use are unclear because it is a case-by-case basis and there are no specific guidelines of fair use, Boyden said.

Students say a new E-Reserve policy may affect whether they have to buy textbooks for classes in the future.

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