Chapter 4: Intellectual Property Rights

Ethical Dilemma

Consider the case of Alice who was writing a textbook. She wishes to include in her book material from various resources- particularly a few key diagrams that have previously been published in other books. Some of these books are quite old, dating back to 1930s and 1940s.

In the intervening years, the original publishers of these books have been taken over several times but, following some fairly extensive research, she is finally able to track down the names of companies who currently own the rights to the books from which she wishes to reproduce diagrams. Following this exercise, she contacts these companies and asks for permission to reproduce diagrams from these works.

The majority of companies respond and indicate that she can reproduce the diagrams- providing that she pays a fee (ranging from £40 through £2,000 per diagram reproduced). Payment is deemed necessary because, although the diagrams are quite old, the copyright has not expired (typically, copyright for material that is published in a book continues for 70 years after the death of the book’s author). Alice decides that she cannot afford the permissions cost (these total an amount which is far in excess of the revenue that she will get from her book once it is published).

Although copyright serves to reward people for their creative work, in practice this does not always happen. For example, only relatively recently have author’s contracts with publishers contained clauses to the effect that they will receive royalty payments for materials reproduced from their work. Consequently, in the case of old books, there is little, if any, chance that an author (or rtheir estate) will receive any remuneration when original material from their book is reproduced.

With this in mind, Alice decides to scan the relevant diagrams, make a few alterations to them- so they look a little different- and then use them in her book without having obtained any permissions to reproduce them.

Ethical Issues:

• In  the case of the older book, should publishers require significant fees to be paid to them if material from one of their books is reproduced elsewhere?
• To what extent should this be underpinned by consideration of fair use?
• Is it reasonable for publishers to require significant amounts of money to be paid in relation to the reproduction of material from an old book- particularly when they know that this will not be passed on to the author, or their estate?
• To what extent is it appropriate to simply make modifications of diagrams, and therefore avoid the payment of permission fees?

• To what extent is Alice is guilty of plagiarism?

Reaction:

The book should be paid since Alice will be using some of its diagrams to produce another textbook. The company who's reproducing the book should give a fair discount to Alice since according to the Fair Use Act, but if it is used for educational purposes it has no charge at all. It will be better if Alice will just get some of the ideas written in the book and come up into another idea from her own instead of copying that will lead to plagiarism. Alice will be subjected to plagiarism if she has edited the diagram that was quite similar to its original form. It is because plagiarism is the close imitation of someone's language, idea, and expression.