Book Printers Denounce Libraries Copyright Plan

The president of the Association of American Publishers this week denounced a library plan involving Harvard and three other major eastern libraries.

In a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Copyrights, Townsend Hoopes said the plan, which entails cutting back on purchases of publications and photocopying and distributing materials, was "ignoring the rights of copyright owners."

Hoopes said yesterday the Research Libraries Group (RLG), which includes Harvard, Yale, Columbia and the New York Public Library, was "choosing simply to not honor a gentlemen's agreement which forbids this sort of thing."

Not Suitable

He said the Senate is revising and updating the copyright laws to clarify them, but even under the present 1909 laws, photocopying and distributing previously published material is "a violation of the law and subject to suit by publishers."

Hoopes said he feels violators of the copyright laws are not prosecuted often enough. He said if the RLG begins copying publications and distributing them among the libraries he "will be surprised if a number of suits were not brought against the libraries."

Louis E. Martin, Harvard College librarian, said yesterday the publishers are creating "a bogey-man that does not exist. A lot of the plans they are objecting to are just conjecture. There's nothing definite on the boards as yet."

Martin said he realizes that copying already-published materials in a very sensitive issue for the publishers but "regardless of what we decide, it will be well within the copyright laws."

Edwin E. Williams '38, associate University librarian, said yesterday that in the past, normal procedures had been "to allow one single copy of any publication to be made for a scholar."

Same Policy

Williams said, "We've been following this policy for years," but that publishers now claim it is illegal and "are afraid of a trend rather than the fact of this instance."

He also said that major libraries such as the ones involved in the RLP are aware of the laws and "are careful to do nothing illegal." He said there has not been any wholesale copying done at all.