But the Kinko's case, in which eight members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) won $1.8 million in damages and legal fees, hinged on two exceptions contained within the "fair use" provision. According to the law, fair use does not apply to copies made in "a commercial nature," and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the copy righted work is grounds for determining what is fair use.

The court cited both exceptions in making its ruling, saying that copy stores could not make copies without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder. The decision sent shockwaves through the copying industry, as many copy companies scrambled to comply, contracting with copyright clearinghouses in some cases and placing the responsibility for obtaining the permissions on professors in most others.

"One of the outcomes of the Kinko's suit was a greater compliance throughout the industry," says Judith Platt, spokesperson for the AAP, which provided both the organization and the lawyers for the suit.

Following the decision, Kinko's agreed not to appeal the case in exchange for a promise that AAP would not further sue the company for additional copyright infringements.

Immediately hailed by publishers as a breakthrough, the agreement irked some small copiers, who labeled it a "corrupt bargain" and openly questioned the AAP's tactics.

One small copier, James M. Smith, made his challenge brazen and, for the publishers, frighteningly public. Shortly after the agreement was initially made, Smith, the owner of Michigan Document Services, went public with his opposition to the AAP, charging that the publishers had used their legal leverage to create a lengthy, overly-expensive process for obtaining copyright permissions.

That process, he says, unfairly discriminates against small copiers and terrorizes the academic community.

"We've already lost one place [copy store] in Ann Arbor," says Smith. "We have situations when professors want to use their own books in their own class and can't. It's an avaricious monopolistic system that affects students and scholars."

With Smith making noise, Platt says AAP decided to begin the second phase of their copyright enforcement campaign: bringing smaller copiers into compliance. Picking a starting target was easy--the organization filed suit against Michigan Document Services February 27 on behalf of three of its members. And Smith says he is itching for a fight.

"This is a calculated infringement suit against us," says Smith. "I know it...and I refuse to be intimidated."

Smith attracted the publishers' attention not only with his outspoken style but with his open solicitation of business from college professors in Michigan. The entrepreneur even advertised his own system for making restitution to publishers: Smith charges customers one cent per page for royalties and planned to send them an annual check.

But Ronald S. Rauchberg, lawyer for AAP and the three plaintiffs, Princeton University Press, St. Martin's Press, and the Macmillan Publishing Company's Free Press division, says his organization is not trying to pick on the little guy.

"This guy [Smith] has a kind of genius for publicity," says Rauchberg. "But in effect, he was writing to professors and saying you can do it by the book ... or you can do business with me."

Rauchberg, however, says that such an arrangement is unacceptable.

"He was so brazen about promoting his business as illegal [that] if we had left him alone," Rauchberg says. "I have no doubt that in every other university community there would be this problem.