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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.
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.
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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?
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.
...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.
Store Clerk: Shall I price this up at $1.99? .99's are owned by Wallmart ..... We need a new price label gun.
Store Manager: $1.99 good idea, but all the
Store Clerk: what about $1.98?
Store Manager: Owned by Texaco...
Store Clerk: $2.01? that's an unusual price, no one will have..
Store Manager: BestBuy
Store Clerk: 2.02?
Store Manager: Circuit City
Store Clerk: Fine, what price should I put on it?
Store Manager: One and one sixth of a dollar and fourteen halves of a cent.
Store Clerk:
I suppose you're one of those "It doesn't matter until it happens to me" folks.
You know all those problems in the world? They're your fault. After all, maleficent people are a small minority; the only reason malignant evils persist are because of the indifference of the rest.
Too harsh? Maybe, but people like you really tick me off.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
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.
Rhetorical subtlety must be lost on you. The sentence immediately following the "your fault" sentence adequately establishes the context for those who bother to read; i.e. the large class of people (of whom the GP is assumed to be a member, due to his comment) who sit by and do nothing while bad things happen to others are to blame for the endemic perpetuity of human-generated evil. Without their obsequious and/or cynical lack of action, people bent on doing harm would be comparatively powerless and/or ineffectual.
But I suppose some folks need the dots connected for them.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
None of the universities or colleges that I've been to have a coop for books. Most of the times its places that are making income gouging the students with outrageous prices.
The bookstore at the college I presently go to will on their own initiative shrink wrap together all the materials for a class, then charge a 10% premium on their already overpriced price. And that is with the instructor not asking for the service.
Typically the prices will be marked up by 20-30% or so from what other retailers are selling them for. My book this quarter for my class was 35 at the store, but only 23 from Amazon, and about the same at several other places.
So of course I can understand if a campus bookstore would want to abuse the copyright measures to make it harder for students to shop elsewhere, if you can't compete on price or service, just paralyze the competition by limiting the ability to shop elsewhere.
> 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.