In 1978, the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, a consortium of public school districts in upstate New York, was sued by the Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation because the consortium taped educational programs broadcast on local public television stations and provided copies to local schools. This case, known as "Encyclopedia Britannica v. Crooks," illustrated the struggle for a balance between the fair use of materials for educational purposes and the rights of copyright holders to protect the market for their product. In this particular case, the public school consortium lost when it was shown that it had set out to "systematically" record the educational programming and distribute copies to member schools, thus having a detrimental effect on the market for those programs. Today, penalties for copyright infringement vary greatly; but, can be as high as $250,000 for repeated offenses of software piracy (Simpson 28). Although most media specialists will not find themselves in a courtroom due to practices related to copyright infringement, they may have questions about the legality of their actions or the actions of others at their school. If these questions go unanswered, the result may be an urgent "cease and desist" letter from the copyright holder (Simpson 32). (Contains 7 resources.)