Any students who have been sued by the RIAA, this one's for you.

According to The New York Times, Georgia State University is being sued by three huge academic publishers (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications) for providing students with scholarly media without seeking permission from the publishers or paying for licensing. The content in course packs provided to students have been reproduced in violation of the fair use clause.

From my experience, all universities are probably in violation of this clause. How many college students have received photocopied versions of a journal article or a chapter of a book? Unfortunately, Georgia State University got caught.

Scholarly digital content, especially journals, is a very lucrative business. Recently, university libraries have banded together to regulate fees for access to digital journals, so it seems obvious that some instructors, at Georgia State, have been found in violation of piracy laws.

Intellectual piracy is wrong... too bad I probably committed some violations today.