What is cumulative effect in copyrights?

Answer 1

Cumulative effect, along with spontaneity and brevity, is a measure of fairness frequently called on in academic libraries. It looks at the frequency of copying from a particular work, over time.

The easiest example is almost always poetry. If you're discussing one haiku from a giant anthology, you wouldn't expect your students to buy the whole thing just for three lines of verse, and frankly, neither does the publisher; you can make one copy for each student. But if, over the course of the class, you're making 20 copies of this poem, and 20 copies of that poem, and 20 copies of these three to compare, and so on and so on, all out of the same book, eventually you get to the point where you're accumulating so many copies, the students need to buy it.

A straightforward set of guidelines for fair use in academic libraries is at the link below.

Answer 2

The cumulative effect is one of the guidelines for multiple copies for classroom use, as described in Circular 21, linked below. The point of it, in simple terms, is to say that although photocopying one poem from a book (brevity), on the spur of the moment (spontaneity), for one class, is okay, it's not okay to to be copying a bunch of poems out of the same book--there comes a point at which you need to buy the book.

The exact text is:

i The copying of the material is for only one course in the school in which the copies are made.

ii Not more than one short poem, article, story, essay or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, nor more than three from the same collective work or periodical volume during one class term.

iii There shall not be more than nine instances of such multiple copying for one course during one class term.

[The limitations stated in "ii" and "iii" above shall not apply to current news periodicals and newspapers and current news sections of other periodicals.]