News
Progressive Labor Party Organizes Solidarity March With Harvard Yard Encampment
News
Encampment Protesters Briefly Raise 3 Palestinian Flags Over Harvard Yard
News
Mayor Wu Cancels Harvard Event After Affinity Groups Withdraw Over Emerson Encampment Police Response
News
Harvard Yard To Remain Indefinitely Closed Amid Encampment
News
HUPD Chief Says Harvard Yard Encampment is Peaceful, Defends Students’ Right to Protest
To the editors:
Perhaps Noam B. Katz ’04 shouldn’t be waiting until the night before the lecture to request his course materials from library reserves. If he had made his fair use copies earlier, I am sure he could find a time when he wouldn’t have to duke it out with his fellow students. He expects someone to go through the trouble and expense of creating a custom text and then set up a copier for him to use to copy it for free—and make 50 originals available so that there would be no lines, no waiting. Who does he think would pay for this convenience, which he considers his “right”?
Ironically, Katz’s illicit copying raises the price for the honest buyers of coursepacks, since the more people who buy them the cheaper they get—there are fixed costs that get spread over more copies. How expensive does Katz think his honest-to-God textbooks would cost if they were produced for a print run of 100? Why does he think textbooks cost more than bestsellers?
His right to read cheaply is alive and well—it’s called the library. I suspect, however, that if they started a courier service that delivered library materials to his room, Katz would probably complain that he had to tip.
Anne E. Risgin
Winchester, Mass.
Feb. 19, 2002
The writer is a former copyright researcher for BookTech.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.