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Don't Take Notes In the Bookstore
mikesd81 writes "The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the store after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial. The apparent new policy could be a response to Crimsonreading.org, an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers. The Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. 'We don't think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students,' said Tom D. Hadfield, co-creator of the site. The student paper reports that an unnamed intellectual property lawyer agreed with Crimson Reading's position."
well, at least he wasn't tasered.
Strange... we have our instructors post the ISBN numbers of course materials on "information pages" for our online courses, and most (90%+) put it on the syllabus, etc. for on-campus courses. Don't see what the big deal is...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Surely you have to demonstrate that some intellectual effort went into the production of the ISBN for it to come under IP law in the first place (regardless of "ownership"). Presumably the publisher was just allocated a bunch of ISBNs and they just happened to allocat one of them this one book? Shoot me down if you like. I'm not an expert.
an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers
So Harvard Coop is excluded from the list, and I doubt students will be rushing there in a hurry.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
So in effect, ISBN's are owned by no one except for the distributing and maintaining body.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
ISBNs are nobody's intellectual property apart from the ISO. It's an international standard described by ISO TC 46/SC 9.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I think my library has a bunch of books with ISBN numbers on them. Want to bring a lawsuit on them too?
http://blog.heavensdomain.net
I thought the Harvard and MIT coops were co-ops (cooperatives).
In the People's Republic of Cambridge, they should be working with the proletariat to fight the evils of capitalism!
REI is a great co-op, they send members profit sharing each year. Spend more and they make a profit, you get a big fat return at the end of the year (which you spend on more stuff, a never-ending cycle).
Maybe the Coop got bought out by B&N or Amazon?
Trying to win an argument with a Harvard (sucks) student is like licking your elbow.
Back at Princeton, I spent my entire Freshman allowance (yes, sorry, my folks did give me a Freshman bonus or something...) on just books, so it makes me happy to see this sort of thing going on. I wish I had had the internet like these Harvard (sucks) kids.
Is that like saying the UPC number is a copyright held by the company? Or the MAC address, at least the first few parts, are copyright protected?
I am the owner of a local college book website for Colleges in Michigan. I take no commission and it's free to post. But my http://jpauls.net/Jpauls Anti-bookstore lists ISBN numbers on it. If this is intellectual property, am I in violation? Is amazon.com and half.com in violation?
> The Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property.
Wouldn't it make more sense for them to claim that the books' prices are their intellectual property?
The Coop created the price information, but they did not create the ISBN.
I'm guessing that they might have a stronger legal argument if they correctly identified what intellectual property they actually created.
God forbid you mess with the media mafiosi. What I found funny was that some Chinese students were smuggling international editions in and selling them for $10-20 after they were done with them. These were books that were supposed to cost me $150. I also used to wait in front of the buyback tables and offer $5 or $10 more than the bookstores low low buyback price for the books (required for my classes) that they would later sell for five times as much. That really pissed them off, even though the employees were just students getting paid a flat hourly rate.
I used to have a really hard time believing they were worth that much until I got some bad assigned textbooks. Problem was that the bad textbooks had the same damn price.
... but prices don't come out!
still trying to understand if i read this right...its like telling me i cant use a upc code to search products on the internet,nor would a search of movies for sale by title be permitted. i never seen somebody so blatently put and end to capitolism.
So, now book sellers don't want you to do price comparisons? College textbooks are so ridiculously overpriced, its a tragedy. I've been lecturing at a community college for over three years now. One class I do is a non-credit pre-Chemistry class. Because its a prereq for General Chem. 1 and 2, we use the first three chapters of the textbook for that course. The $180 textbook. Many of my students aren't even planning on taking General Chem at my school or at all. But, if they want to be able to keep up with the homework, they have to get the book.
And its the same for all my classes. Books are $100 to $200 new, the bookstores almost never have used books, and if they do you know they bought them back from the previous owner for pennies on the dollar. I start each of my classes every semester by showing the students the "required text" and then explaining how they can get by with an older edition or with some internet research.
Lately students have been finding the wholesale-priced "international editions" online which saves them money without sacrificing quality. But, where do schools and publishers think students are getting all this money from?
I agree with RMS on the topic of the term "Intellectual Property".
It's a FUD term that opportunistic lawyers and unscrupulous corporations (the embarrassingly pathetic SCO) use to justify empty threats and pump-and-dump litigation.
Patents, copyrights, and trademarks mean something. "Intellectual Property" is the high-ranking corporate imbecile's buzz word of the year.
The book store has as little "ownership" of the ISBN as they do of the title of the book itself.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
and see what happens
Most (larger/chain) stores will ask you to stop or leave
Right or wrong, I don't know - it is simply the way "retailing" has been done
of course the Internet has been/is/will continue changing the way "retailing" is done
(but brick and mortar stores aren't going to vanish like some "experts" predicted during the dot.com boom/bust...)
For something to be copyrighted, it has to be creative. That means most information can not be copyrighted.
The example we all should be familiar with is many of the files in Unix; for instance, lists of things required to comply with POSIX. Even SCO wasn't crazy enough to claim that those files were copyrighted.
I don't really understand what this is all about.
I mean, if you have to get the textbooks, they'll have to tell you which ones to get. This means that they are either going to tell you Author/Title/Edition or the ISBN. If you have either of these you can easily look up the other on the internet. And the *prices* can't possibly be protected by copyright.
Moreover, I find it completely normal and sensible to write down the prices of what you are going to get. Maybe you want to pay in cash and have to know how much you have to bring. I mean, what would you do if you walked into a shop, wrote down a price and someone told you that you're not allowed to do that?
I don't know what is going to happen if they are really going to enforce their totally ridiculous "no note taking in a book shop" policy, but I know what *I* would do in a similar situation:
1. Look up the ISBN on the internet
2. Find out where the book is cheapest, maybe both online and offline - they'd obviously out of that because 'note taking' is not allowed
3. Get the book there
4. Only get those books at the Coop which aren't sold anywhere else. Which I doubt are many.
As a Harvard student, I've never EVER had this happen at the Coop. Hell, I take my phone in and snap pictures of books I want to read but not sure I want to buy, so I can get them from the library later. And nobody has ever even hinted at having a problem with it. Not so much as a "You should buy it if you want to read it, it's worth owning."
I'm frankly a bit incredulous. Of course, if they pulled this with me, I'd politely remind them that I'm at the law school and know a bit more than they do about IP.
Copyright would be the lamest excuse. Writing down one number from a whole friggen book s obviously fair use. Even worse, since the ISBN numbers are allocated by the national library. So this is a really, really 'duh' case.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Does this mean they owe the coop royalties on if they let other bookstores use the same ISBN numbers?
that they run a brick and mortar store, stock thousands of titles just so you can come in for the convenience of getting a hands on, writing down the ISBN and purchasing from someone that doesn't have to maintain a storefront nor as many employees.
We changed our business model at least. Thats why when we put together a proposed solution for a client, we charge. You get your 'consultation' fee back if you use us for the work. If you go somewhere else at least we didn't provide a free solution. Thanks goes out to all the cheapo ass-hats out there.
ISBNs on books are the IP of The US ISBN Agency, and since they have the sole authority in the U.S. to issue ISBNs, it's a bit of a stretch (read: LIE) for any other legal entity to claim that the ISBN printed on the book are their IP.
If you prefer, you can ask The National Information Standards Organization, which will tell you the for country X it's organization Y. For instance, Canadians will use their own agency.
The desire to destroy competition is alive and well. Let's hope this is one attempt which fails miserably.
ISBNs might be the publisher's IP (although they actually aren't), but they certainly aren't the STORE's.
In any case, the excerpt of the publisher's putative IP that is represented by an ISBN unquestionably comes under the "fair use" defense. First of all, it is a negligibly-sized component of the book, and more importantly, it is clearly being used for purposes of reviewing the book (i.e., expressing an opinion about the relationship of the book's content to its price).
It's also absurd for a store to eject people doing competitive research. To be sure, some businesses explicitly forbid picture-taking (on the argument that their "trade dress", as represented by the store's design overall, is protected intellectual property)--but preventing people recording prices and descriptions seems like it would fall afoul of various consumer protection laws, even if the restriction were explicitly posted and uniformly enforced (which it apparently is not).
Harvard "Co-Operative Society", we hardly knew ye. Next time, take a voice recorded and a concealed mic. That's faster than taking notes, anyway.
This has come up before and I believe a judge ruled that prices are facts, and facts cannot be copyrighted. That applies to the ISBN number as well.
Although that doesn't mean you cannot be asked to leave the store for doing it. It's their store and they can throw you out for anything they want. And the store is perfectly allowed to suffer for it.
I used to work for a book store. ISBN numbers are about as much Coop's IP as Campbell's Soup's UPC code is your local grocers IP. Even if they were, the prices are not. I recall something similar to this happening in the 90s. Someone got kicked out of a large retailer (I think it was Best Buy or Circuit City, but Google fails me) for writing down prices in order to comparison shop. He sued and won. For a store to get away with this, they would need a written sign that essentially says "no comparison shopping" was the conclusion to that article.
In some ways I feel bad for the Coop. They had to pay someone (or multiple people) money to assemble all of this data in an easy to use format.
No they didn't. The ISBN numbers are printed on the books.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I also put the book, which they did not have in stock, on order to be received by the bookstore just in case my order fell through. I cannot believe bookstores are wining because they do not hold 100% of the market with buyers. They are still getting 90 percent of students simply by listing the book requirements to late before classes start to actually order a book online. School bookstores are doing more anti-trust activities than microsoft.
The students working the service desk knew exactly what I was doing, and they weren't about to stop me because they pry did it themselves. (lol, gotta love cheap labor)
http://jpauls.net/~Jpauls
ISBNs are public information, and if they belong to anyone, it's whoever registered the book to obtain the number.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I understand your compassion and desire to see people compensated for their work, but have you really thought through what you are saying? I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me under such a plan as you are advocating, copying a phone number from a telephone book would become copyright infringement. Do you really want to go there?
Copyright doesn't cover data itself, only your specific expression of that data (i.e., the way you arrange it in a report).
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
You don't see how because they don't have any claim other than their meaningless words. They're being under priced, they know their being under priced, and they simply have no desire to cater to demand that sales be cheaper. Taking it out on the customer is just the cherry on top.
...it is recirculated once the book goes out of print; many books have the same ISBN but only one in print book at a time can use it. One minor correction, from ISBN.org, I found: ISBN CAN NEVER BE REUSED: Once an ISBN is assigned to a title, it CANNOT BE REASSIGNED even if the title goes out of print. In addition to being an order fulfillment tool, the ISBN is a bibliographic element in cataloging. It is printed on catalog cards, in catalogs and entered in national and international databases. So it always has to be the same book, it's never 'recycled.'My work here is dung.
They are also free to go out of business for being such retarded protectionist asshats. In a free market, it's really their choice.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
For years I've had this future scenario where the world is controlled by IP companies; they have their own armies, etc.; if you create something (even a grocery list) you have to register it; one company owns the Bible, another owns all of Shakespeare, another owns the units of measure and the value of Pi, so anytime you quote Scripture or measure something or heat water to make it boil you have to pay a royalty, etc. Is this where it's heading?
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the store
/.ers to stop stealing my ideas. First response will be, "umm, no". If they had Tazed his butt, then it would be news worthy!
Jarret kindly said, "No", and continued to write.
Let's be real, how is this news? It's like me asking
I guess I'll have to be the first:
NEWSFLASH - COLLEGE BOOKSTORE RIPS OFF STUDENTS!!
Not that we shouldn't try to prevent it, or that this isn't a new manifestation, but this sort of thing happens pretty much on every college campus, doesn't it?
-- "Oh. This guy again."
As we all known, college textbooks have been corrupt for a long, long time. It actually makes me think that we ought to move to a "pharmacy" model, where the book stores must be independent from the colleges, just as the dispensing of drugs is separate from the prescribing doctor to prevent this kind of corruption.
Of course, you couldn't do anything about private universities, but the government could implement this for public universities, and hopefully shame the private ones into going along.
If Harvard is going to these extremes such as this to prevent people from copying down a few numbers in the bookstore, you know they're corrupt to the core. Clearly they've long abandonded their mission of being a place of higher learning. Of course, the whole Ivy League's been running on reputation for a long time.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I strongly suggest that you check out ISBNDB, which is an online database of ISBN numbers. You wouldn't have to go look up numbers in-person, thereby removing any possible blame from yourselves.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Coop attempted to challenge the ISBNDB, however....
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Of course the Coop was just making up something off the top of their head when they used the "ISBN number" pretext.
I really would be curious to hear a serious legal analysis by someone who knows, though.
My completely naive notion would be that you're on the retailer's property, and it's not totally obvious what things you're doing by right and what things you're doing by custom and by permission. Certainly you can't steal a book. Certainly you can't damage a book e.g. by tearing a page out of it.
Certainly you can open a book and flip through it even though the cumulative effect of dozens of shoppers doing this eventually causes the book to become shopworn. But is this actually by right, or is this just by custom? Quite possibly it merely a courtesy extended to me by the store.
Price information and easy price comparison help the consumer. Denying this information helps the retailer. How far does the law go in requiring the retailer to make things easy for consumers? There are such things as hired comparison-shoppers who are working for the competition. They are not bona fide customers and are not going to buy the items they are looking at. Is a store required to be nice to them?
Gas stations have such big conspicuous outdoor price signs that it must be required by law, but is that state or federal law?
In Massachusetts, shelf labels in supermarkets and drugstores are required to show a computed unit price (which is oddly useless because of creative variation in the unit used, but never mind). Until very recently Massachusetts required individual price labels on every item (but caved to years of open defiance Wal*Mart and other national chains). So Massachusetts has a certain amount of law that sorta-kinda says the consumer has some legal rights to easy price-shopping.
The Coop and the college bookstores of the world have a pretty tight lock on textbook shopping. It's not absolute, but it's certainly not a frictionless free market and every college town I've ever been in has had one very clearly dominant bookstore, and, usually, one also-ran which has some of the books you need, just coincidentally at the exact same prices as the dominant store.
Completely tangential footnote: one of my proud moments as a dad occurred in the nineties, in the days when I was still using dialup and most people didn't know what "dot-com" meant, and my kid was in college, and called me, distraught because the college bookstore was out of a textbook she needed for a course, and was estimating six weeks for restocking. I logged into Amazon--quite possibly using lynx as my browser--saw they had it, smiled my big Daddy grin and (mentally) pulled out my big Daddy wallet and had them overnight it to her. In this case, of course, I was paying more than the bookstore price (but the overnight shipping was, of course, only a fraction of the book's cost).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
No surprise college textbook stores want to do this--especially independent/coop stores which often have tighter margins (as opposed to B&N/Amazon/etc chain stores). Many of these stores that don't have millions / hundreds of thousands in the bank virtually go broke before classes start, and then make all their money within a several week period (ie, before semesters or quarters start). What they don't sell, they return to the publisher. Despite the margins they DO manage to get, because of the nature of the business, many bookstores have large periods of the year when they are in very tight financial situations.
Bookstores almost always receive a minimum of a 30-40% discount when they buy from the publisher--B&N/Amazon/Borders tend to be able to use their clout to get higher discounts than an independent store or coop. Wholesalers may get even higher discounts. In addition, many publishers will have an "adoption" price and a regular price--so if a college adopts a book, they can buy it for a cheaper price than an individual. Adoption price+40% discount.
Makes sense they would want to protect that margin, as online stores, used resellers, etc are taking a large chunk of the traditional college bookstore business.
Having said all that, I completely don't understand the coop's legal argument.. not like a publicly listed price is a trade secret, nor the ISBN owned by the resller!
To me it's even worse than that. The damn phrase is becoming such an integral part of our vernacular it makes me want to vomit. Some creative outfit doesn't ever show you their new design, or product, or what have you anymore. They show their "new IP." Bullshit. Gah, I have to move to a different thread now, I'm getting livid just thinking about it.
What's next? They claim they own the page numbers too?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
the Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property.
It's a numbre assigned by this group http://www.isbn-international.org/ - to assign what is known as the International Standard Book Number - that identifies a particular edition of a book (hardbound, paperback, audio-book, etc.) from a particular publisher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN
They can no more claim copyright over that than Home Depot can claim copyright over the SKU of a chain saw or a box of nails.
Why was the student going to the bookstore to lookup ISBN's anyway, if he had his required text list he could just as easily find them online which is where he was going anyway to buy the books right?
Intellectual property isn't a concept in the law in and of itself, the term is really more a way to spread nebulous FUD and also a convenience term to collectively speak about legal concepts that are separate but all deal with the notion that people can own ideas.
So what form of intellectual property exactly does the bookstore think the numbers fall under?/P>
They're not copyrighted. Even under modern, highly stretched definitions of creative works you can't copyright a number like that. What original expression of an idea does it represent? Not that someone wouldn't try it, people have even tried making claims as stupid as that the price of their merchandise is copyrighted.
They're not a trade secret. The numbers are printed right there on the book.
They're not a trademark. When someone sees "978-0-7356-1879-4" they don't think of this particular bookstore, which is good because that would make it really hard for other stores to sell the same book. Intel did try to trademark the number "486" and failed, which is why they started naming all their chips "Pentium" instead.
And, they're not patented. Even given the level of rubber-stamping the Patent Office does, I don't think "A system for designating a book with the number 978-0-7356-1879-4" would cut it. Maybe if you added "on the Internet" in there somewhere...
Dont give anyone more silly ideas.
Hey, i claim IP rights over the decimal point. Its' Mine! Pay up!
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the bookstore doesn't have a website ... I look online at the beginning of each semester, but for some reason I know that Amazon will be cheaper...
OR you can understand that intangible items are NOT PROPERTY. if you don't like the thought of not being compensated for writing your book, don't fucking write it. no one will miss it.
The laws regarding purchasing the international copy of a book (international copies of the same book which have different ISBN numbers and are technically not to allowed to be sold in US) are a bit murkey. But it appears that you can, indeed, get those books legally.
A blurb from a rather lengthy reply on Google Answers: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=295219
"The current state of US law is that international versions of textbooks that are lawfully manufactured under the authorization of the copyright holder can be legally imported by a party that has acquired them outside of the US, for subsequent resale within the US. While the copyright holder can require that their license holders (the international printers) do not themselves ship manufactured copies directly for public distribution in the US without prior consent, the copyright holder cannot prevent a party from purchasing lawfully manufactured copies outside the US, and importing them into the US for sale or otherwise disposal."
Check out http://firstandsecond.com/
For the opportunists amongst you, this does present an arbitrage opportunity to buy books abroad and resell them in US, though it is my understanding that companies like Amazon and EBAY have provisions against resale of such books.
That's what happens when you go to them dern' tootin' fancy ivory colleges.
He's saying that Harvard Sucks. Even somebody who went to a State University can figgur that out.
I personally disagree that Harvard sucks; it's a great way to avoid work while spending as much of daddy's money as possible. Plus you can announce it loudly at meetings where most people might think it's inappropriate. Because it's never inappropriate to let people know your parents had more money than their paretns.
You no, mebbe thats jes' me. But I be a pore old ignorin' fuel, and not hily idjukayted.
The resident geek's daughter bought most of her books online, from Amazon, Powells, etc. and she saved HUNDREDS of dollars for one semester. Multiply that by the htousands of students on campus ... that's a lucrative monopoly the campus bookstores are defending.
This seems somewhat counterintuitive, especially since most of the retail establishments have handy lists of their prices on newsprint for you conveniently stacked by the door. In fact, I frequently call stores (mostly music stores, but Daddy's Junky Music and Guitar Center are certainly chain stores, sometimes furniture stores, sometimes BestBuy and CircuitCity - this only really works in places that have actual sales staff) and said "Hi, do you stock product X? How much? Thank you." I usually ask about their hours, as well. They are happy to give out this information.
The only establishments that suppress their pricing information are those which stand to lose by comparison shopping. College Bookstores have a long history of having a monopoly on book sales, which meant they could charge whatever price they wanted. The internet is eroding that monopoly, and this frustrates them, because they now have to charge reasonable prices for the books they stock, which eats into their margins quite a bit. (Note: Textbook publishers are not blameless in this, but that is a whole different issue.)
It seems to me that unless they're trying to stop her from redistributing those ISBN numbers and prices, it's far more of a "We're a private bookstore, so we can ask anyone we want to leave. If you want free reference go to the library" type of issue. It's something of a nasty move on their part, but unless there's something about Harvard's status as an educational institution that prevents that, and which I'm not aware of, then I think it's their right. I don't see why IP has to enter into this at all.
Why does my local college charge MORE than cover price for books? You can see the cover price in the ISBN which is usually way more than what a book ususally sells for new. For instance it could be $90.00 USD, but they sell the damn thing for $135.00 USD PLUS TAX just because they can stick it on the fiancial aid loan. Looks as though everyone is getting robbed; but I still have no idea who benefits. University of Cincinnati satelite school. Who owns the school?
Unfortunately, some professors do write the textbook for the class, and then release an 'updated' version every few semesters. These updates usually consist of format changes that make studying or doing homework with an older version difficult, if not impossible. They require the book for the class, sell it for the standard (read: ridiculous) price, and get a nice check at the end of the year. I had to drop a logic course one semester, took it again the very next and was forced to buy a brand new text. What makes things worse is that I couldn't recover the pitiful sum college bookstores pay for used books, or even sell it on craigslist or the like because nobody needed the old version...
Why is this news???
1) the course website (the one off my.harvard.edu under classes) posts what textbooks you need if your prof knows about its existence
2) email your prof or your TA and ask or
3) ask one of your classmates what the textbooks are
4) its six authors and prices - you can remember that
5) certainly they can ask you to leave for whatever reason they damned well please but that's hardly going to stop anyone from taking down the titles and authors and ISBNs and getting them online anyway. This is the first time I've heard of anything like this. While I took classes I've asked them to print out a list of books I needed and got the cheap ones that were available used there and the rest online - which is what this guy (and everyone else) did. They'll probably get yelled at by some faculty and will hopefully shut up after that.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The store has the right to not let people write down their prices. The customer has the right not to shop there. I've heard of this practice in other industries (computer mega-marts), and when it is true, I just cross that store of my list of potential business.
I'm not advocating copyright at all. The bookstore had to pay someone to organize all that data on the tags, get the books together by course, etc. For someone to just come in and duplicate that data seems like cheating. OK, for a better example. Google allows me to geocode addresses for the purposes of showing points on their Google Maps product - just as the bookstore makes their organization available for the purposes of buying the books. Google's terms of service prohibit me from using their geocoding service as just a source of data for something unrelated to Google Maps. None of that geocoding data is copyrighted - you can't copyright the fact that zip code 11111 is located at long x and lat y. Nonetheless, it took Google a considerable amount of work (or money) to geocode all those zip codes, addresses, etc. Should I just be able to query their API and take it? It isn't Google's data. They merely organized it in a convenient fashion - something that is hard to do and takes time and money. Likewise, what if I want to compete with Amazon and just screen scrape their data about the book that they had someone enter from the publisher? None of that is Amazon's copyright. I definitely have the right to create a competing book webiste that has the same book data. But Amazon has hired people to input data from publishers, ensure it's accuracy, etc. Should I not have to hire staff to do that because I can leech off of Amazon's work? It's a really grey area. On the one hand, it certainly isn't copyrightable. It isn't original, it should be able to be duplicated. On the other hand, it seems wrong to duplicate it right from a competing source that spent the time/effort/money organizing it. If you believe that (morally) I should be able to just screen scrape Amazon's data to create a competitor, I would love to hear your perspective. If not, what are the limits of stealing a competitor's organizational work? These are serious questions not to be dismissed as "oh, the bookstore is just evil" or "people are stealing". They require intelligent thought.
Next time don't take notes, take photos. With your cellphone. Fast, easy, surreptitious.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
look up the prices online, print them out and then compare to what they see in the store
C - the footgun of programming languages
Most kids have phones with camera features. Snap a picture. Sorry in case I'm offending you all, but I'm against the customer to hold a pen or pencil in a bookstore. What if he writes on the pages, by accident? Who wants to see a pencil mark on one of the pages. Usually, there are computer terminals in bookstores whereby the customer can look for the book details. As far as intellectual property goes, use the phone - make as if you're calling/texting. Snap the pix you want. It's harmless and unnoticeable.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
Look, regardless of what you think about "Patents, copyrights, and trademarks" (and whether they "mean something"), the term "intellectual property" is useful for the same reason most superset terms are useful. Sometimes, you want to refer to "Patents, copyrights, and trademarks" altogether, and the term "intellectual property" or "IP" saves you the effort. I don't see how it creates FUD any more than the term "significant other" is FUD.
In fact, that's a great example of how your post (and everyone who says the same thing) appears to me. It's like you said: I agree with RMS on the topic of the term "significant other".
It's a FUD term that relationship advisors and social spiders ( likethe embarrassingly pathetic Miss Manners) use to justify empty threats and pump-and-dump litigation.
Boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, fiancee, wife, and husband mean something. "Significant other" is the high-ranking psychologist's buzz word of the year. I agree that "intellectual property in ISBN numbers", let alone by a BOOKSTORE, is ridiculous, but I don't understand the objection to the term IP.
(Incidentally, for my part, I wish people would distinguish "intellectual works" -- the writing, or software, or movie -- from "intellectual property" -- the legal rights related to such works, but that's a separate matter.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Tuition at Harvard is $30,000+ . Per year. Are students attending this place really that concerned about saving $30-40 bucks on a textbook? Having said that, textbooks in general are way overpriced and having a website that does price comparisons is great. There's another one called campusi that is really excellent. But textbooks are a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of tuition nowadays. Even in Canada, tuition is spiraling out of control. It's ridiculous. Students shouldn't be forced to take out loans to get an education.
I'm trying to figure out whether you're a troll or not, as this viewpoint seems so bizarre to me.
All this kid did was basically find the book he needed on the shelf, write down the ISBN/title, which the bookstore has nothing to do with, and write down the price that the bookstore put on the book. I hardly think that putting a price on a book is a huge effort.
What you're saying would result in situations where price comparison shopping would be illegal. If I walk into a furniture store and see a chair I like, then go into the one across the road and see the same chair for $50 less, should the first store be able to sue me for "stealing their intellectual property"? Of course not, as it's utter crap. But it's basically what this bookstore is claiming. It's also what you're advocating.
If they don't want people buying the product for less at another store, then they'd better make damned sure that they're at least close to the lowest price available. Otherwise, it's just friendly retail competition.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Hey coward, you're aware that a substantial portion of college bookstores are no longer owned or run by the schools, but by private companies right? Usually it seems to be Barnes and Noble, at least for the schools around the DC area. Those are 4 year schools and Community Colleges alike.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
So instead of going to Harvard Business school to look for ways to better compete in the bookseller market, the coop went to Harvard Law School to find ways to stop competition altogether.
/.
-and "No", I don't have to read TFA; this is
The Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees.
Request they list the ISBN with the list of books required so you can order the correct text. If they ask why, tell them you understand supply and demand, MSRP, and discounts. You prefer to shop for bargains.
The truth shall set you free!
The problem is that patents, copyrights and trademarks are all very different. It's like you created a "superset" term for your wife, your car and the frozen pizza in your the fridge. And then after that, mainly because the terms complete none-meaning, people used your term to talk about their dog or eating ice cream.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
> What's next? They claim they own the page numbers too?
If they're claiming page numbers 386, 486, and 686, they'll have a big battle with Intel.
Max.
That's an interesting point you make. This semester I saved about $300 with a combination of using the Internet and not buying a book that I can borrow from a friend.
Supposing there are one million students in the US (I have no idea the how accurate this is) then thriftiness is COSTING US BOOKSTORES $600 million a year! (Assuming two semesters a year.)
Therefore, thrifty students are causing about as much damage to the ECONOMY as fraudulent ad-clickers on Google.
So, in other words, you're just as confused as the guy I originally responded to.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Hey isn't this what camera phones were made for? Take a picture and email it outta there before you get caught!
Sort of surprised that Harvard doesn't have some whiz-bang online syllabus etc where they would list the book titles, and someone could be convinced to also supply the ISBN codes so you could do all your shopping w/o even getting up from the desk.
Any bookstore who claims that ISBN numbers are their IP needs to be thrown in jail for stupidity.
Having said that, any business has a right to do business (or not) with anyone they want. They can throw someone out for not buying something if they want.
The school should tell you who is teaching the class, and the teacher should tell you the books you will need. Better yet, the school should keep a list of books for classes.
Andy Out!
I, along with just about everyone I know at MIT, go to the Coop (Harvard/MIT Cooperative) at the start of every term, head over to the textbooks and copy down all the information and prices we need right in front of whoever is working there. I just did so two weeks ago, carrying a bag from Quantum Books (a bookstore next door with sometimes cheaper textbooks) too. It doesn't make any sense for them to care about getting the books somewhere else since it's a cooperative anyway. Something doesn't seem right here.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
TFA and all posters seem to have missed the point. If a business keeps its prices secret, how can customers know if they can afford the goods? It isn't anything to do with "rights" - it's a ridiculous bookshop operator who has become so carried away with the current spirit of aggressive fascistic bullying, that getting his rocks off thusly seems more important that the most basic structure of commerce. And the other Americans are so far gone they can't see this either. Just leave the sad moron to polish his Nazi memorabilia and buy books somewhere else. From walking on the moon to cultural collapse in less than 40 years. Frightening to watch, but fascinating also - so long as one is on another continent.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
not a blank cheque.
... if by "FUD term" you mean "category". Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are all subsets of intellectual property. It's a perfectly valid phrase, it has meaning that would be more difficult to express without it, and it's intuitively phrased. What exactly makes it a "buzz word"?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The coop's argument here reminds me of that old "Microsoft patents 1's and 0's" article on The Onion, because it's just as arrogant and ludicrous.
College textbooks are one of the biggest evil overpriced rip-offs in the world anyway. Most of them aren't worth their weight in shit to begin with, and then your classes "require" them even though the professor inevitably lectures and tests you on stuff mostly not in the textbook anyway.
College kids, if you want to make the world a better place, stop pirating MP3s and start pirating textbooks.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Try going in with pad and paper and writing part numbers and prices down, or better yet, just obviously photographing the price tags, and see what happens.
Not really, it is just you who doesn't understand the issue.
That's silly. Patents and copyrights are obviously related in a way that patents and ice cream are not. The term is used because it's useful.
Stallman doesn't like the term "intellectual property" because he doesn't like the idea of ownership of inventions, so he's issued a fatwa against naming something he dislikes. All the rest is just handwaving.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I found out very quickly when I went to school that these schools aren't around for our benefit. They don't really care if we succeed or not, they're just around to make as much money off of us as they can. I know when I went to University two years ago, I would go into the bookstore with my booklist, get the prices, and go to Chapters. I remember saving almost $200 one year by doing it this way, but I would occassionally get the odd book that I could only get through the bookstore. It changed a bit when I finished at University and went to College, since all of my books are either Microsoft or Cisco certification books, they apparently aren't allowed to mark them up (they wouldn't tell me the reason), so I don't have to buy them online anymore. Still, occassionally I would have to buy some book for some course that would be marked up like crazy, and I always found it cheaper elsewhere. One thing I loved about the bookstore was how they would help me out and buy back my books at the end of the semester, but I only ever did that once. I'm not going to do them a favour and have them buy back my $200 text book for $25 and have them resell it next year for $150. Fuck them, I'd rather give it away for free or burn the damn thing. Theres no sense in bitching about it anyways, I'm in my fourth year of school and I'm already $35000 in debt, another $15000 and I should be done.
Many other posters have stated that ISBNs and prices are not something the Coop can protect.
However, the Coop is probably in their right to refuse access to anyone they want. It is not a public right to use any given shop since the shop itself is private property.
It is obviously bad publicity.
When I was in university, they published the books and isdn numbers for your courses in a very unhandy binder, which you had to copy this down, now what I'd do is get the books I need, the prices, write them all down on a piece of paper, take that home because I had to tell my folks how much my books were going to cost. so they knew what to expect... With this... it's not only legally wrong, but sometimes it's not just for competition that the behaviour is done. what if a student needed the money wired for books, and needed to know how much to ask his folks for.
well, at least he wasn't tasered.
The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now music downloaders were tasered, arrested and condemned a-la Judge Dredd.
A couple of years ago I was only angry at the U.S. Now I'm all freaked out.
If nobody can explain it, can you blame me for not understanding it?
The entire argument (and I use that term REALLY loosely here) is, "trademarks, patents, and copyrights are different, so you should never use a term that refers to all three, because it's confusing and FUDish".
Then I explained the concept of a superset (one moron actually put it in quotes like he hadn't heard of it), and how in many instances, people want to refer to all three.
Response: but no, this is like *really* different man, like a pizza and a wife.
So, yeah, maybe the problems on y'all's end. Perhaps call in AKAImBatman of "price point" fame?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
OCLC provides a service which can give you a list of "related" ISBNs. This can be all the different editions, audio versions, etc. It may help you find a version of the book you're after. Here's an example, obviously replace the ISBN with yours. http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/0596002815?method=getEditions&format=xml
Every time I go to a library book sale, there are people there with scanners hooked to their PDA's, madly scanning ISBN's to see if the books sell for more online than the library book sale price + handling&shipping. You don't even need the back-end software: just quickly scan the ISBN's, go home, and look them up on amazon, alibris, and half.com. This poor kid just got caught doing it the old-fashioned way because it's slower.
I love local bookstores, and support them when I can afford to, but that doesn't extend to college textbooks, and frankly, the Internet is going to destroy most of them because it levels the distribution asymmetry.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
'Tis but a flesh wound!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN/
If ANYONE ones the IP for ISBN it's W.H. Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.H._Smith/, who invented the ISBN.
It's now an International standard of 13 digits, similiar to the ISSN.
The "Harvard Coop" can in no way, shape or form claim to own the ISBNs of the books.
It is a patently false claim.
However, if you know the book titles, you can do a simple lookup on the name / author / keyword to get the ISBN/ISSN lookup amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b/ref=sv_b_7/102-3443928-1463353?ie=UTF8&node=465600/
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Not to mention other bookstores. What makes one bookstore own the ISBN number? Can they sue other bookstores for having that number in their store?
This is so insanely bogus, words fail me.
30% for publisher, 30% for bookstore, 20% for author, 20% for printing costs.
In Boston, I'd be more worried about the pepper balls...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
One number would not, but there have been recent cases (I forget where) that have ruled that Yellow Book for instance cannot just use an AT&T telephone book as its primary source. The actual phone books involved were different, but I forget which ones they were.
Once you get those ISBN numbers, perhaps in the school bookstore with a little secret spy camera or whatever, check out bookmooch.com . Bookmooch is a site which allows you to 'mooch' books off of others for free, in exchange for people being able to mooch from you, the whole thing being governed by a point system. It is not a one stop shopping solution for all books, since much of the time what you want isn't available from anyone (though in that case you can put it on your wishlist), but the price is right, so it could be worth checking. Also a good way to get rid of those texts you don't want to keep afterwards for points you can exchange for books you do want. Certainly worth checking out, and you can search on ISBN.
Loose lips lose spit.
... it shouldn't be: in a free market, it's essential that people compare prices as efficiently as possible.
If anything, we should really require stores to post pricing information publicly on the Internet in XML format to make comparison shopping easier.
Even if the ISBN could be considered IP (which I highly doubt!), it would be the publishers' IP, not the bookstore's.
:)
For some reason, I found it quite amusing that a Google search for 'ISBN intellectual property' returned a bunch of ISBNs for books about IP
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
I have attended, or worked for 3 universities (UIUC, Cornell, Caltech). All of them have an official university book store. UIUC had 2 large private competitors in the area, who were often, but not always, cheaper than the official store...
Forgive me for thinking you are full of it.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
The campus monopoly bookstore's loss is the local pub's gain.
Nobody should ever shop a the COOP. Period.
Their ridiculous markups are just plain inexcusable, especially if you are buying your textbooks there.
(Yes, I got sick of leaving $800 there for books for a few courses a long time ago. Ah to be young again and to take the "required" tag seriously...)
Also, for your language/foreign book needs Schoenhof's is right around the corner - one of the best bookstores in the freakin' country, and well worth patronizing.
sic transit gloria mundi
... and are not transferable. So unless The Coop published the books in question, they're full of it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
FTA
From the website of the International ISBN Agency
A range of umbers are assigned to them. How can the identification numbers be their intellectual property then?
America, Home of the Brave.
the easiest way to get cheap books is to order them from india or china. Textbooks that sell for over $100 in the US sell for under $10 there. Even after shipping you only pay $15-30 per textbook. Its easy to find a place to purchase them using google. Thats what I do, I'm not paying a ridiculous overhead.
Nobody has pointed out that what used to be the Harvard Coop is now owned by Barnes and Noble. Is it still a coop? Is this policy one of the Harvard store, or a general Barnes and Noble thing?
Sounds like sound budgeting to me.
I write down prices of Item I want to buy all the time so I can budget for them
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Dude, I just took your CarWifePizza for a ride. I couldn't get mine turned on. Hope you don't mind.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Professors should provide the ISBN number in addition to the name of the book, the author, and edition.
Although truth be told, if you have the name of the book, the author, and the edition you can get the ISBN number online.
I bought my last textbook online. I called up the school bookstore and asked them for the ISBN number of the textbook my class would be using. They refused to give it to me. So I asked for the name, edition, and author, which they did provide. I then went to Amazon.com and found the book, plus the ISBN number.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The price of anything is determined by the lowest price that the item can be had for. What the Internet does is destroy most ability for price discrimination.
Where at one time you could dig through catalogs, classified ads and lots of other stuff trying to find a low price today it is much simpler. What the school book store does is have everything where you can put your hand on it vs. placing and order and getting it later. Many net-savvy people are deciding that the immediacy of having an item isn't as important as the price. This is facilitated by price search tools and pricing consolidation tools.
You also have criminal enterprises able to sell stuff at a fraction of the manufacturer's price. This is uncommon for textbooks but getting more and more common with other stuff. Today, anything of high value and low volume can be found on the Internet from black and gray market dealers, usually at less than 50% of the manufacturer's list price. Why not if you can steal it and resell it without much chance of getting caught? You can worry about the ethics of it after the first few million.
The problem is you are trading low price for locality and service. It also clearly pushes everything towards the Wal-Mart mentality of low, low prices at any cost. No "brick and mortar" store is going to be able to compete with near-slave-labor-wage warehouses and criminal enterprises. We are going to see the idea of the local store (of any type) go the way of the corner drug store.
The value of examining something before you buy will be lost in the mad rush for the lowest price.
It's a bigger deal than you might think - the Coop is operated by Barnes and Noble, as are the majority of college bookstores across the country.
Triv
Best Buy does not own the copyright in question. So Best Buy was in no position to accost this fine individual, so long as it wished to keep a customer.
No, WA at least it isn't like that at all. If you use the on campus bookstore, you would be paying a premium of about 20-30% on the books you buy. The bookstores here don't have any meaningful competition as anybody that uses financial aid has to purchase them directly from the on campus store. And unless you go in to copy the ISBN or have a teacher that posts it ahead of time, it isn't a sure thing that you're going to get the correct version of the book. On a few occasions, I've been in class with people that had a subtly different edition.
I pretty much always shop elsewhere, but when I was going to a school in a small town, if there hadn't been a non school shop in town, I would have been pretty much completely screwed for the extra cost.
I'd look at a few of the other comments to my original post, I'm not the only person living in an area where the campus bookstores gouge.
Are you saying that trademarks, patents, and copyright aren't different? They are all the same in one way: they are government granted monopolies on the expression of ideas. Patents and copyright are similar in another way, in that they serve a similar purpose, encouraging innovation. But they are different in most other ways. Trademarks are very different in almost all ways, as they serve the purpose of limiting fraud.
The main issue is, why would you need to refer to them under one superset term? The only real reason I can see is to advance the agenda of treating them all as if they really were property which they are not. They are government granted monopolies on the expression of ideas. Why not call them thought monopolies? That would be a more accurate blanket term, but it doesn't advance the real agenda, so of course it isn't used.
A pizza and a wife are similar in some ways, they are things that make one feel good, they are also things one can eat, and they both occasionally have sausage in them. Of those three shared definitions, few would argue that 'enjoyable things' would be a category one could lump them both in. Many people would find the other two shared definitions somewhat insulting, as they denigrate the true purpose of a mate. Lumping trademarks, copyright, and patents under the rubric 'Intellectual Property' denigrates their true purposes (preventing fraud in the first case, encouraging innovation in the latter two) and thus is offensive.
Does that help you understand why some people find the term 'intellectual property' offensive? I'm not asking you to agree with the argument, but you seemed confused as to what it was, and I hope this helps.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Screw them! It is faster to just take a pic of the ISBN number. You can be in and out before they can do anything about it!
OR you can just keep comming back every 30 minutes or so. Get a bite to eat, come back write down more book ISBN numbers.
Can I claim that my email address is my "copyrighted intellectual property" and sue spammers under DMCA? :-)
Indeed. This whole concept of the economy being up or down is a bit oversimplified. When it is 'down' for one group or set of groups, it may well be 'up' for others.
You learn many things at a University. And one of those things is that the University needs money, and isn't always too scrupulous about it. They use the "burned hand teaches best" method, with that nice bonus that it raises some of those badly needed funds. The campus bookstore is trying to make money, and will often step across the line to where they are trying to rip you off. Only need 1 item? Too bad, items are sold only in packs of 5. Used books are always harder to find than new books. Check the book edition carefully, never know when (by mistake of course) an older edition has been mixed in. Some classes will require special items which will naturally be very difficult to get anywhere but at the campus bookstore. They have dozens of little tricks like that.
You also learn that a car can be a big liability-- it's a magnet for parking tickets. Some Uni's are looking for every technicality. At one dorm I was in, a parking spot at one end of the lot was always empty because it didn't have a line painted on the curb therefore it wasn't an official spot (has to have paint on both sides!) and therefore the campus cops could and would ticket any car in that spot. They'd also do this just before and just after midnight so they could get you twice for the same violation because it happened on 2 different days.
It doesn't help that some of the new students are so accustomed to cars as transportation that it doesn't occur to them that the customary way to get from dorm to class is to walk. One of the editorials I saw in the student paper was by this student who on his first day drove to class from his dorm. He couldn't find any legal spot to park in front of the building where the class was, so parked illegally and got ticketed and towed. Most of us are smart enough to figure that one out the easy way.
And merchants want in on the action. Salespersons love visiting the dorms and doing the hard sell on those gullible freshmen.
Would be a great civics lesson for someone to stand up and get some of these shady policies and practices exposed and shut down. Meanwhile, I have a lesson for that University with the harsh parking policies and predatory campus bookstore. I don't have to give them any money when they come asking their alumni for donations. Towing someone for parking in reserved spots is one thing, ticketing for some "painted line" technicality is quite another.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
1) email one's respective instructors for the upcoming term asking for info. on required texts. I ask for ISBN #s explicitly and get them most of the time, the times I don't I might go back and confirm texts with the instructor to determine the ISBN. 2) shop for best price. Start #1 at least 2-3 weeks before the term begins as Amazon (and other online shops) default to pretty slow textbook shipping. (One place in Texas comes to mind, forget the name, but they are a big online textbook source and good otherwise...) Anyway - I rarely ever go to my campus bookstore. They are unprofessional and recently cordoned off the book sections, insisting that the "employees" will retrieve desired texts. Not sure why and no explanation is given. (I'll show you if you'd like to visit Hayward, CA. oops.)
If I don't have anything better to do Saturday, I will be heading over to the Harvard Coop so I can look at their selection of interesting computer science books. Yes I will be writing down ISBNs and prices. I am trying to think of a proper response if I am asked to leave, but so far I haven't come up with anything better than "is this illegal?". I hope I don't get tasered.
mr pibb + red vines = crazy delicious
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Shouldn't the frozen pizza be in the freezer? I'm just saying.
http://xkcd.com/294/
1. Buy all books from bookstore
2. Leave and write down ISBN's
3. return books
4. ?????
5. Profit!
They are very different, though. Roughly: Patents == idea; Copyright == implementation of an idea. In fact one of the better arguments for why software patents are a terrible idea is that software is the only "thing" that can be both patented and under copyright, basically subverting the meaning of both.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
the student was trying to get the best price. the bookstore is trying to keep their business from declining. however, they failed. this publicity will only hasten the inevitable. local and small businesses will be put out of business by Big Business. there's no way the locally owned bookstore can compete with the likes of such giants as Amazon. this is bad for the economy. the majority of people in a community are employed by locally-owned or small businesses. when these businesses go out of business or bought up by Big Business, there will be a loss of jobs. I believe in free-enterprise and capitalism, but it must be kept in check or 'rebooted' every so often. if left to nature to evolve on its own, small businesses go extinct.
Caltech's bookstore will let you show proof of a cheaper price at several online retailers (amazon included) and they'll match that price. You might not want to purchase anything else at the crazy prices they have there, but at least they keep the textbooks competitive with online options.
@AlexSheive
I've been wandering in and out of the University Bookstore here wearing my thecannon.ca (a student-run textbook classifieds and other things site) shirt for days...I hope I don't get arrested...
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
ass raping college students for over 25 years.
seriously though, I have never seen a college bookstore I didn't hate. efollett is the worst by far.
My campus efollett bookstore actually added a NYTimes bestseller to each English class on that campus by themselves without professor approval.
That's entirely unethical.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I went to the World's Greatest Engineering University (tm), which also had Coop branches, back in the 80s. I seem to remember getting something from the Cooperative Society some years ago saying they were selling out to some big retailer, or something. Since I no longer shop there and no longer get a rebate check, I tossed it in the trash and pretty much forgot about it. Anyone know anything about this? I only ask because I doubt that the Coop would have adopted this policy if it were still a co-op owned by the students of Harvard and the Institute.
Just don't buy anything from them! They really wish to go out of business..
I don't write down notes any more. "Sampling" posters, ads and prices is the main use for the camera I'm always carrying in my mobile phone. And I can easily send the info around, plus I get timestamps for when I got it. As long as I don't use my flash, it's even good in museums trying to prohibit copying art that's in the public domain (as long as I have the sounds muted).
I just wish that the camera would embed the GPS coordinates and direction the camera was pointing, so I'd have everything recorded. There might be a nice little app to insert all my pix into a Google map, or a Second Life world, or some other model. Especially if I could collaborate with lots of other people, we might gradually piece together a good image-tiled model, even showing aging across different pix.
--
make install -not war
Even if that were correct, which it isn't, don't those two concepts seem much more closely related to each other than either is to a field of lettuce or a warehouse full of steel?
After all, the argument being made by Stallman and echoed by his zombie cultists like the one who opened this tangent isn't that the terminology is suboptimal; it's that it's deliberately misleading and anyone who claims to see a relationship between patents and copyrights is speaking in bad faith. At a minimum, I'd think it's obvious that a reasonable case can be made that property rights on the implementation of two different creations fall under the same umbrella.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I have one thing to say: http://www.unibabble.com/
I think someone is seriously angry here. Angry, as in: not having a full understanding of what's really going on at College Bookstores and making us out as Public Enemy Number One.
As the owner of a small, privately owned (as in by me) College Bookstore (annual gross sales around $550,000/year) There are a few things I would like to point out. Before I do, let me insert the following caveats:
1) The principles upon which I choose to run my store are not necessarily how all bookstores do so (let alone those in my category of "small" and "privately owned"). Still, my comments are probably a good a place as any to start forming an understanding of College Bookstore practices.
2) I do actually care about customer service. However, I may not necessarily define the student who walks into the store with the intent of buying all his/her books elsewhere as a customer.
3) I do understand that owning a business and having it be successful in the long run is as much about relationship building (with customers and the institutions we serve) as it is about economic viability. Successful businesses, which are not a monopoly or government sponsored in some way, usually understand this.
4) I would like to hope I understand (there are those that may disagree with me) that the College Textbook market is rapidly evolving, principally due to: 1)the internet 2)rising textbook prices 3)rising tuition costs and 4)the way students are learning.
Having prefaced my remarks, I have few things to say:
I am not a rich man (at least by my standards) and neither are most of the students who attend the College I service: My annual salary is in the low 50's, which I think is reasonable considering I am the owner. I work about 50 hours a week outside of Fall and Spring Buying season (where I work 70 hours per week).
I know textbooks are typically very expensive. Bookstore profit margins on textbooks typically range from 20 to 25%. So to the extent that we sell books does in some way make us "part of the problem." We do try to get our hands on as many books as we can, because they cost us less and we can sell them for less. If a book is being used again for a class and it's not moving into a new edition we'll usually pay the student 1/2 our selling price for the book. This is an industry standard practice, so I don't really know where the whole "pennies on the dollar thing comes from."
Maybe the disenchanted community college instructor is referring to scenarios where students are selling back books that aren't being used again. These books are sold to wholesalers, who then pay us what we paid the student for the book (typically 5 to 35% of the new value of the books, depending on a variety of factors) plus a 20% commission. These books then sit in a massive warehouse, until a store like ours calls them to buy the book and sell in in their store, where it gets sold again as a used book. Because publishers cannot, for the most part, do EULAs with their new books, they understandably hate this practice and try to (my opinion) push out new editions as fast as they can get away with.
It's also possible the student sold back the book at a wholesale price and then *after the students sold them* we get an order for the book to be used. We encourage faculty to submit orders early because it allows us to buy back more books at 1/2 sale value and it allows us to get more used copies, but like the saying goes: you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink....
Our store (like almost all others) sells books according to what the faculty tell us to sell and what kind of book it is (e.g., required, recommended or optional). This doesn't always mean the book actually gets used or is really needed for the class (as any sophomore or senior will tell you) but it is *what we were told to list the book as* by an instructor or department chair. We find the books that sell the best meet one of more of
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
If they're claiming page number 666, they'll have a big battle with Microsoft.
The publisher of record for a book is the entity that owns the ISBN number. citing http://www.fonerbooks.com/2006/08/isbn.html a Self publishing blog, I'm pretty sure you could find it somewhere deep in the depths of this ISO 2108:2005 http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=36563 but you have to pay to get it.
So for Harvard Coop to own the rights to these ISBN numbers they would need to be the publishers of the books as well. It would be amazing, but I doubt that the Harvard bookstore writes, prints, and publishes all there own teaching materials.
Here's the list of ISBN numbers that Crimsonreading.org has collected, http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pxZykg0guofL1VaDsFRbwHg from an initial look at the list and the ISBN numbers they do not look as though they all come from the same publisher.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number if you want to break down the ISBN to Country, Group(language), Publisher, and then individual title numbers.
That's nice. I think I'll start using that phrase too. In fact, I think I should have an intellectual monopoly on using the phrase 'intellectual monopoly.' But I'll license it to you ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Department stores in high-density populated areas go nuts over anything. Smaller independent shops and shops in low-density areas are more sensible. Shop from there.
ISBNs are owned by the publisher... as in if you want an ISBN, you have to buy one either direct from the issuing organization or from a reseller who bundles the ISBN with some sort of self-publishing package... e.g. you can get your own for your book by buying a package from iuniverse or lulubooks.
The "coop" doesn't own jack shit with respect to ISBNs.on any publications it doesn't own or license the copyright to, and simply buying the books for resale doesn't give it that right any more than you as a customer have a right to claim it.
It can require its customers not to take notes, but asserting ownership of IP it does not own gives it nothing but substantial legal exposure from multi-billion dollar publishing companies who don't care where people buy their books from.
I don't know where it's getting its legal advice, but I'd say they should find an attorney that didn't get his license to practice out of a CrackerJack box.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Coulda fool'd me, ACs dont even HAVE UID's. Which by the way, I own the copyright of. You're all in violation and owe me quite a bit of money, per post none the less.
As for you AC, you are not in violation of anything. That said, you're still an idiot, and im fairly sure someone ows the IP rights on that. Best watch yourself.
Lol...its also the name of the local bookstore where I grew up.
http://www.booklandcafe.com/
That's not a joke, actually. See West v. Mead (where the answer is yes, they do), and Bender v. West (where the answer is no, they don't). Probably it will end up being 'no' in light of Feist, which came out after the Mead case, and before the Bender case, but at the very least the claim has been made.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
the store was owned by barnes and noble, so i'm guessing that many bookstores at universities across the nation operate like this:
the markup on new books is about 20%. the markup on used books is 50%. they would offer you 50% of the new price for a used book--provided that the book would be used again the upcoming semester. then they would sell it for 75% of the new book's price.
textbooks is not the biggest moneymaker for college bookstores. convenience items and college merchandise are.
Yes, it's a superset, but it's a very bad one. Its use should be discouraged, especially given as how it is quite rare that people actually do want to refer to all the bodies of law that compromise so-called 'IP law.' (Which encompasses more than the three listed earlier in the thread)
Further, the term is quite pernicious, as it tends to deceive people into thinking that the various laws are related, and further that they are related to property law or that the subject matter of the laws are various properties. So even if you want to have a superset, you wouldn't want this one; it's misleading, probably deliberately so. It's a bit like the history behind the terms 'Bolshevik' and 'Menshevik' in Russian politics.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The customized textbook solution is good if you're looking to get them away from the $180 chemistry book (it wouldn't happen to be the Silverberg package, would it?). And even then, it's going to still run money (mostly for the copyright clearance -- and some larger unis do this internally for cheap). As for the bookstore bit, if you don't change custom books, then your custom book should have decent resell value.
:). This is just discussion on slashdot, afterall.
....
As for the international eds: yeah, I've seen some nice ones too, more often than not. But when you say entry level... it's a different name for the same thing. What's more probable is that the 3rd world books are going to start being a lot more expensive over in their country of origin. Anyone who thinks that the publishers' solution to the international grey market will be to lower the cost of domestic books is really not thinking so clearly, or at least not like a publisher.
The "you" was, in fact, generic
As for pricing structure: I can say without doubt that our store is outside the norm for most college bookstores. We are independent (neither owned by the university nor a national chain), and our school is the largest in the state. There have been trade articles written specifically about our company's pricing and buyback policies. So again, I can't speak for other college retailers, but we don't make the vast margin that people think we do. Personally, I wish that all required texts were $10 and we always had used copies of everything. That would at least drive traffic to the store. Unfortunately, that's not the case and probably won't ever be. So, we do what we can: we discount all new textbooks 10% at a minimum from the MSRP. All of our surplus funds go back to the university, and this gives back to the student body -- we pay for scholarships, student life projects, renovation of structures, etc -- through an endowment to the university. We've given over $39mil since 1968, and next January we will add another $1.5mil to that. So that's where our money goes. As I said, we're different. But I wonder how many people on our campus know what I've written here, even though we advertise this information frequently. No one bothers to find out, they just complain about the prices and buy online, and quite often don't get as good a deal.
One word on electronic texts: talk about no sell-back value items
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
Ha, LOL :)
...and if '7' then a big battle with Steve Jobs, according to most people on /., it seems.
[7 is supposed to be God's number, for some reason]
Max.
All those underprivileged Harvard kids paying full price for their books! How will they ever be able to make it?!?
It just looks like you're messaging someone...
Harvard has one of the most respected Law Schools in the country and the world. Mr. Class of '73 apparently never attended. I think the proper response to this outrage is a day-long flashmob. Organize students and sympathetic members of the public to go in and retrieve ISBNs and prices. What better civil disobedience than excercizing your rights en masse so that it is impractical and impossible to take action against individuals.
Notmysig
This guy gets it. Only thing you left out was the lower print run of the typical textbook vs the latest Stephen King novel. Interesting you picked King, because he's exactly the example I use when describing what you say above (happens frequently, especially during orientation).
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
b. To desensitize you to what harm you'll be inflicting on a suspected perp in a controlled situation, thus encouraging its abuse in the field ("I withstood it; suck it up and have some more!")
c. To train you so that if one gets used on you you won't be incapacitated
d. Both b and c.
I go with d. Experiments have proven that escalation is the norm when dishing out pain, and when someone is regularly given power over others, they do not gain empathy for their subjects. Maybe if every use of the taser shocked both parties equally would abuse be curtailed. Enforcers have more empathy for their partners than the skels (or at least as long as taser duty is on rotation).
Consider also that the microwave gun may induce only a momentary intense burning sensation, but that's only if you can get out of the beam. In practice, it will be trained on a moving victim, tracking him so he can't evade. Longer exposures will do physical harm. Include the same microwave emitters on the weapon's grips.
Unwarranted use of deadly force might stop entirely if discharging a weapon caused injury to its operator by driving spikes from the grip into the hand. Someone truly in fear for their life engaging in self-defense should be willing to accept a personal injury as an immediate consequence for saving their own life at the expense of the other's. Maybe not that extreme. Certainly not a guillotine trigger or exploding firearm.
But just how gray of an area is requiring personal consequence in the use of deadly force in the defense of others? Discuss.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Wanna substantiate that? Or continue to be stupid by slinging names without substantial debate?
If you have a problem with what I said, speak up. Don't cower behind your vague insults and wordless moderation.
What do you think the N in ISBN stands for?
It's an International Standard Book Number, not an International Standard Book Number Number!
Why don't you go pay for that book with money you got from the automatic ATM machine? Sheesh...
Of *course* they know it's bullshit. That's what assholes do - spread bullshit.
Amazes me the speculation on the legality and intent when common sense tells you their just being assholes. Must be pretty dry tinder out there for such a small spark to go up in flames so easy...
This is also Wal-Mart's explicit policy (if you look around the store you should find it posted somewhere). Probably plenty of other large stores too.
I have no idea if it's legal or not.
This is interesting, but the origin of a term doesn't always correspond to fad usage or to a particular fad.
Such as the FUD fad evinced in recent years by certain litigious corporations.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
the kid ain't too bright either... aren't all the necessary details on the course's syllabus?
Besides which, ISBNs aren't unique identifiers in an adequately meaningful sense for this
purpose: any minor change in the book can result in a new number for the same content.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I was at this same bookstore a few weeks ago and I was in a similar situation: there were some titles and info I wanted to jot down for future reference. If I have a pad handy, sometimes I write the info there but since I didn't then, I entered the info on my cellphone and sent myself a message about the books I was interested in. No one at the store hassled me or anything. Maybe that's a way not to get into trouble with this. BTW, it's a good store but I have to say that the Harvard Bookstore down the street was much better- there was a much more interesting selection there.
I see Harvard's business model at work. Create a monopoly by stifling competition.