Ruling increases bulkpack prices

A federal court ruling will force students to pay more and wait longer to buy bulkpacks, a spokesperson for Kinko's Graphics Corporation said last night. U.S. District Court Judge Constance Morley decided last week that Kinko's violated federal copyright laws and infringed upon publishers' rights by selling bulkpacks containing substantial portions of copyrighted materials for profit, according to an article published in today's Chronicle for Higher Education. Morley rejected Kinko's claim that using copyrighted materials for bulkpacks fell under the "fair use" portion of the copyright law. Kinko's spokesperson Adrianna Foss said last night the court's decision will have a tremendous effect on the bulkpack-selling industry, causing prices to rise and making bulkpack production more time-consuming. Foss said the ruling will change the way bulkpacks are prepared for sale. Before last week's decision, printing businesses would review all copyrighted materials to be included in a bulkpack and determine which documents require permission to publish under 1976 copyright laws, Foss said. In the past, printers only needed permission for a small percentage of the materials which went into bulkpacks. Foss said last week's ruling forces printers to obtain permission from the publisher of all copyrighted material before placing it in a bulkpack. She added that requiring permission from these publishers will vastly increase the number of publishers who demand royalties for use of their materials, and increased costs will be passed on to students. Foss said it will also take longer to produce bulkpacks because of the time spent obtaining permission from all the publishers. Foss said Kinko's is considering appealing the court's decision. "We were disappointed that [the ruling] will negatively impact the education of students," Foss said. Foss said students who wish to purchase bulkpacks that were printed before last week's decision can no longer do so, unless the printing businesses obtain specific permission. "They can no longer sell those [bulkpacks] that are lying around," Foss said. "What was legal on Thursday is no longer legal on Friday." The federal court's decision is the culmination of a two-year-old lawsuit, Basic Books Inc. vs. Kinko's Graphics Corporation, filed by eight major publishers who claimed two of Kinko's photocopying stores had illegally reproduced "substantial portions" of 12 books for bulkpacks sold to students at universities in New York City, according to the Chronicle. Kinko's, which is the nation's largest campus bulkpack producer, claimed in the case that the photocopying was necessary for educational purposes and should be permitted under the copyrighting law's "fair use" provision. The provision allows limited amounts of materials to be published without permission under certain circumstances, the story said. Morley said Kinko's "insistence that theirs are educational concerns and not profit-making ones boggles the mind." Officials at the campus branches of Kinko's declined to comment last night, and employees at the University's other major bulkpack supplier, Campus Copy Center, also said they could not speak on the issue.

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