The Copyright Clearance Center is extending its offer of blanket licenses to larger universities. In a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), some school administrators expressed concern about the implicit waiver of fair use assertions:
But some librarians are ambivalent about blanket licenses,
Mr. Rehbach [Jeffrey R. Rehbach, the library-policy
adviser at Middlebury College] says, because they fear that colleges will
pay for copyright licenses instead of asserting their rights
under fair-use doctrine. “We debate back and forth whether
this is the best model for us,” he says. “As we move toward
more licensed products, are we giving up basic rights under
the law?”