We were recently contacted by a potential customer who wanted a copy of a specialist, backlist book. We didn’t have it in stock and had to order it in for him. When the book arrived, we contacted him to tell him it was ready to ship, at which point he told us that he had in the meantime purchased the book online and was going to scan every page and post it online because “information should be free”. We debated whether we should reply to this man and give him an education. We eventually decided against it because he seemed to be quite self-righteous and a little unhinged, and there is no talking to people like that.
It made me more sad than angry, to be honest. There have been no shortage of teachers who have told us that they photocopied a book off a friend, or that they bought one student book and endlessly photocopied it for their students because the school had no resources. As an aside, I would like to point out that these schools that don’t have materials for the classroom and are thus the worst for violation of copyright are invariably goverment-funded. It is no surprise that the govenment has never made it a priority to to enforce copyright laws! The other thing that made me sad was how self-serving this man’s argument was. The book that he had ordered was Campaign: English for the Military. Macmillan spent a lot of money developing that course and the authors spent quite a bit of time writing it – all for a limited market. Presumably they thought there was enough potential reward to merit the investment, but I assume the payoff would have been modest.
People love to villainize – or simpy not care – about educational publishers. I will admit that I often am amazed at their poor business sense, but they are deserving of respect. They take (or perhaps “took” is more apt at this point) risks and published materials that are the base of the classroom and students’ learning. They are all hurting right now, though, and anyone photocopying books right now should know that by not paying publishers for their work, they are ensuring there will be fewer and fewer quality books to photocopy in the future. Teachers and schools complain that books are expensive, but so are salaries. A teacher without a course to teach is not a terribly effective teacher, so it just makes sense that some money would be invested in the course materials as well.
Add into all of this the recent changes in copyright law in Canada, and there is good reason to drink. Reently, lawyer Richard Owens wrote an article for the Financial Times about how fixing Canada’s copyright laws are essential if we wat to keep educational publishers from dying. We are all part of a team – teachers, students, schools, publishers – and we need good content to continue to be produced. Even if I haven’t ignited the flame of passion for this issue, please imagine that it is sexy (and know that it is important) and read Fix Canada’s Publishing Laws before it puts Publishers out of Business.
Oh, and just as an FYI, ESL textbooks are all workbooks and therefore EXEMPT from copyright agreements. It is always illegal to photocopy an ESL textbook, even if your school has bought a copying license.