Professors still wary after bulkpack confusion

Officials at local copy centers said this week that students will have no problem buying bulkpacks this semester despite last fall's copyrighting confusion that led to higher prices and long delays. But at least one professor is still waiting on his bulkpack a month after giving a copy center his materials, and several professors said they will try to avoid using bulkpacks for their courses in the future because of last semester's problems. The confusion stemmed from a federal court ruling last spring that required copy centers to begin securing permission from publishers before using any copyrighted materials in bulkpacks. Prior to the ruling on Basic Books vs. Kinko's Graphic Corporation, much of the bulkpack material was printed without publisher consent because copy centers felt the material fell under the "fair use" clause of 1976 copyright laws. This clause outlines the purposes for which people can reproduce copyrighted works. Now, after a semester of experience dealing with the ruling, officials at both Kinko's Copies and Campus Copy Center say publishers are granting permission more quickly and charging smaller royalties. "Last semester was quite a learning experience for everyone in this industry," said Michael Drake, the permissions manager at Campus Copy Center. "This time it went much smoother." At the start of classes last semester, many students had to wait weeks for bulkpacks because publishers could not keep up with permission requests. The delay forced some professors to revamp their course outlines. And because many publishers began charging royalties in exchange for the permisssion to copy articles, the price went up as well, sometimes by as much as fifty cents per page. Drake said prices have "settled down a little bit," averaging only between three and five cents per page in royalties. He said the highest per-page royalty he has seen this semester is 27 cents, down from 50 cents in September. He added that the response time from publishers has been cut to an average of between 10 and 12 working days. Adrianna Foss, a spokesperson for Kinko's national, also said that the second time around was much easier because the copy centers, publishers and professors all knew what to expect this semester. "We learned a lot during the first transition term," she said. "The second term has been going much more smoothly. Everybody was prepared for the increases in permission requests." But for Communications Professor Joseph Turow, advance preparation has not helped much so far. He said he dropped off bulkpack materials for a course to Kinko's in mid-December, but was told recently that it is still not ready. A worker answering the phone at the copy center yesterday said Turow's bulkpack could be delayed more than a week because the store is still awaiting publisher permission. Complaining that the process is very "cumbersome," Turow said he would try to use bulkpacks "more sparingly" in the future. Assistant English Professor Herman Beavers said he decided against using a bulkpack for his American fiction class partly because of the difficulty involved in securing permission to use older material. And Anthony Kroch, an associate linguistics professor who pledged in September to put more material on reserve, also said he plans to avoid using bulkpacks in the future because of the hassle. But despite last semester's problems, Drake said Campus Copy increased its sales recently. He attributes the better business to Campus Copy's policy of securing publisher consent for professors free of charge unlike Kinko's, which charges $15 per item.