Why Are You Required to Use ECCO for Independent Unit Readings?

A classmate, preparing readings for an upcoming Independent Unit, writes:

I'm really unhappy with the pdf we submitted for [Reading] so I found another that is a clearer copy. This version is from an anthology I found online at Google Books, and because of this, the Fs and Ss have been sorted out, it has been annotated, and it has a preface with some useful historical info.

I've posted the request to use a non-ECCO reading here, and my response below, because the issue is likely to come up again. By this point you've all wrestled with the C18 primary documents and you know the challenges they present, from poor typsetting with faint or broken letters, to the serial s's, to the highly idiosyncratic punctuation. Nevertheless, it's important that everyone use PDFs taken from ECCO for their course readings. Here's why (an edited version of my response to the student above):

I sympathize (believe me, I sympathize!) with the desire to give your classmates a clear, readable text to work with, but I'm going to ask you to stick with the ECCO version (but feel to look for a more readable edition on ECCO).

There are several problems with going beyond ECCO for course readings, some having to do with smooth course management and the particular goals of this course, and others having to do with the complicated issue of what does and doesn't constitute a trustworthy edition of a text.

More specifically:
1. ECCO levels the playing field, among groups and among subject matter. [Some authors] are readily available in a wide variety of post C18 editions, both online and print. Using those "easier" editions encourages subsequent groups to limit themselves to readings that can be found in similar forms. Groups that want to use particularly obscure texts, available only on ECCO, then feel that they are at a disadvantage in presenting texts that are more difficult to read.

2. The pool of texts available through ECCO constitutes nearly everything published in the C18. The pool of post-C18 editions available available through modern online editions constitutes that subset of C18 texts that subsequent generations of readers have deemed interesting. Part of the point of going to ECCO is to bypass C19 - C21 filtering mechanisms to decide for ourselves what is and isn't worth reading.

3. Not all post-C18 editions are created equal, and C19 editions can be particularly dubious. What you find may be excellent or it may be terrible--but without deep familiarity with the source-texts and knowledge of how the modern edition was produced, it can be difficult to know whether the modern editor has adhered to rigorous standards of literary scholarship or haphazardly transcribed the text in order to produce a cheap edition.

4. Under the terms of the university's contract with CENGAGE, circulating PDFs of these texts for classroom use constitutes fair use. The similar use of non-ECCO sources is not so straightforwardly acceptable a way to avoid paying copyright fees, particularly in the case of more recent modern editions of C18 texts available through Google Scholar.

Feel free to e-mail me with questions about this issue, or post your questions here.