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Hotel Being Sued for Using the Dewey Decimal System
cbull writes "Did you know the Dewey Decimal System isn't in the public domain? The rights are owned by the Online Computer Library Center. They are suing the Library Hotel in New York for trademark infringement. In addition, according to the article, libraries pay at least $500/year to use the system."
According to this page, Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) anonymously published the system in 1876.
On the other hand, it seems that the Online Compyter Library Center does do quite a bit of work to maintain the system, which should entitle them to some rights - but it sure seems that if some guy published something anonymously in 1876, he probably intended it to be in the public domain. Seems to me, if the hotel was based on the original system, and not the one improved by subsequent owners, he should be ok - especially if they referred to it as the "Melvil Dewey System" or something.
I had no idea it was owned - how come they aren't going after the elementary schools that teach the system? Or is that included in their library's license? And how come we're teaching a proprietary, trademarked system? Next thing you know, they'll be teaching our kids Windows!!!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
"A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system."
Yeah, right. If I was particularly jetlagged, drunk or whatever, I might pop up to the counter and ask to speak to Melvil Dewey. But I'm sure I'm not alone in that I never even considered that a numeric system invented in the next-to-previous century would still be owned today, much less that anyone who used it would be representative of that owner.
It's lucky that I'm ambivalent about my primary school; when I was there, I organised the books according to the Dewey system. If I were at all bitter, I'd rat them out, and not just becuase the 098 section was completely empty.
Oh, and here's something funny. In my research for this comment, I typed 'dewey 098' into google to see if it still meant what I thought it did.
098 is for forbidden books. Now that you know that google for 'dewey 098' while you're feeling lucky.
Anything from before the 1920s should be in the public domain, even if nothing after that will ever go into the public domain. I mean, was there indeed some perpetual copyright clause slipped into some bill or another? How could anybody otherwise still own the rights to this?
No doubt. The DDC is such a pain in the ass when you're used to LOC. I am also suprised to find tht it's still being licensed. I thought the only people still using it were in countries that didn't want to submit to LOC guidelines because their own copyright laws were uhm, different.
I know that's the case here in Taiwan. I was shocked to find major research universities using DDC and then when I began working with a publisher I learned that it had a lot to do with copyright and the LOC. In fact, I taught classes on using the LOC at one point for students preparing to go overseas.
But personally I find the DDC obnoxious and far more of an obstacle to research than a helpful classification system.
Even if the complaint was reasonable, the damages being sought are beyond absurd. Triple the profits the hotel has made since it opened? First, I can't imagine how the OCLC was damaged beyond the loss of revenue they would have gotten from a license. Second, I can't imagine that every cent of profit the hotel made over the last three years was a direct result of their use of the Dewey Decimal system. Perhaps some of it came from, I dunno, being conveniently placed in the middle of New York?
It would only make sense that they should have to prove that every customer who stayed there wouldn't have were it not for their use of the Dewey Decimal system.
It sounds like this non-profit actually serves a useful purpose, but I really hope that if this goes to court, their damages get capped at around $4500 (triple the money the hotel saved by not buying a license).
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It's simple really. You're not supposed to just make up LOC numbers for you local archive out of thin air. If you've got a new title, you have to submit your title to the LOC. But if your book is largely a collection of "borrowed" material being reprinted without authorization, that's obviously not going to be your first choice.
Things really have changed with the IP nazis on everybody's ass these days, but once upon a time there was a large market in reprinting expensive foreign titles and even making custom bound compilations. See the problem? Where are you going to file that?
The ideal system would be a free-text search of all the books in the catalogue.
You make a very good point that a hierarchical system isn't suitable for cataloging. I have the same problem with my more than 6000 (all legally acquired) MP3s: Artists span Genres, Albums contain works by more than one Composer, Artists may appear in more than one Group/Band/Orchestra, etc.
But free-text search isn't a great solution; we've all seen that with Google: I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
In these cases, an abstract is more useful than a full-text search.
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