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Update: District court grants partial s.j. to publishers in copyshop case

Although the students press the “start” button to make a copy of a coursepack, the copyshop is the “source of the reproduction” supplying a master copy of the coursepack, equipment and staff assistance.  This is vastly different, says the court, from a scenario in which a student gets a coursepack from a friend and steps into a copyshop to duplicate.  Short work is made of the Fair Use analysis:
Purpose is commercial (it’s the copyshop’s purpose, not the student’s)
Nature – creative
Amount – MDS case cited, showing that professors tend to choose qualitatively important material
Market – adverse impact because the copyshop can undercut competing shops that pay royalty fees
Blackwell Publishing v Miller at

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