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@make(letterhead,Phone"497-4330",Who "John McCarthy", Logo Old, Department CSD)                    
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@begin(address)
The Editor
Stanford Daily
Stanford, CA 94305
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@greeting(Dear Sir:)
@begin (body)
         
	The 1976 law on copyright represents the outcome of prolonged
political battles, debates and compromises.  Perhaps the law contains
ambiguities, some of which may even have been known by its drafters.
The current lawsuits may settle something.

	Regardless of the state of the law, it is worthwhile to
think about what kind of system of payment for copies would
benefit the country.  The public, including students, should be
able to use excerpts from books, articles, etc. at reasonable cost
and authors and publishers should be paid for their efforts so that
the incentive to produce good textual material will be increased.
These incentives are important; the American Mathematical Society
has greatly increased the number of high quality research-expository
articles by paying for them, and the Russians produce good quality
mathematical and scientific texts, because the financial rewards
of publishing there are substantial relative to the regular salary
of a scientist.

	In my opinion all copying, even for classroom use, should
be paid for.  However, the standard copying fees, printed on articles
are usually much too high; they will almost never be paid.  A rule
of thumb is needed.  I would suggest that for paper copying, the
price be 50 percent of the physical cost of the copying.  Thus if
someone uses the Stanford Library copying machines at 10 cents
per page, 5 cents per page would go to the publisher.
Larger scale copying costs (say) two cents per page, so one cent
per page would go to the publisher.  How much goes to the author
should be part of the contract between the author and publisher,
but scientific journals, which ordinarily don't pay authors, should
pay them part of the copying fee.

	This rule of thumb has nothing special to recommend it
other than the fact that those who copy can afford 50 percent
more, and the amount so collected would be very substantial
to publishers.  Since publishing is a competitive business,
substantial collections from copying would eventually make
the price of books less than they would otherwise be.

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Sincerely,
 
   
    
John McCarthy
Professor of Computer Science