Georgia and Copyright Conniptions

So the Fantastic ILL Librarian at my institution was kind enough to forward me a link about the Georgia State University copyright case (because I've apparently been living under a rock. Or, graduating).

And I'm still trying to figure out one thing: What are these publishers thinking?

For example, here are a few samples of the original injunction in 2008 (courtesy of UNC Charlotte's Blog [their emphasis])...

First, GSU has to agree to follow a set of copyright guidelines written back in the 1970s - which are obviously still completely relevant and not at all outdated or anything...

Further, the court must make sure that GSU be prohibited from ever again: "creating, reproducing, transmitting, selling, or in any manner distributing, or assisting, participating in, soliciting, encouraging, or facilitating the creation, reproduction, download, display, sale or distribution in any manner of copies, whether in hard copy format, digital, or electronic computer files, or any other format, of any and all Works without permission"

Oh, and also, GSU must:

"• Give a copy of this order and the old guidelines to all faculty and staff involved with any online teaching;
• Ensure that the order and guidelines pop-up every time anyone (faculty, staff, etc.) attempts to upload any copyrighted material to a GSU website (eReserves, uLearn, faculty web pages, etc.)*
• Provide with the report a list of all materials on E-reserves during each semester, including the course reserve page for each posted work and how many “hits” each work got during the semester;
• Provide access each semester to GSU’s computer systems, including online courses, to plaintiffs so they can ascertain compliance for themselves"

And more! Including follow-up programs for monitoring, 'educating,' and generally making sure this sort of sharing never happens again.

But, as noted by Peggy Hoon and others, cost and some fairly significant legal issues make it impossible to actually enforce all of these guidelines.

So why issue such a set of draconian, incendiary demands? Why, when Elsevier has agreed to allow open access self-archiving by authors, would these publishers take such a drastic step in the opposite direction?

I'm not informed enough about the publishing game and the profit models to understand, but I'll be watching this case closely (along with many other librarians, I'm sure).

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*I can imagine this will be a such huge hit with anyone ever using GSU computers. I can hear the cursing now...