The Coop Throws the Book at Students
Posted on September 21st, 2007 in Uncategorized |
Here’s an interesting Crimson story: The Coop tries to have Harvard students arrested for copying down book ISBN numbers so that they could find the books online cheaper than the Coop sells them.
The year-old, student-run crimsonreading.org site allows Harvard students to find cheap textbooks at Internet booksellers by clicking on the courses they are taking. The Coop has argued that it owns intellectual property rights to the identification numbers for the books it stocks, which are organized by course on the third floor. Crimson Reading Director John T. Staff V â10 insists the information is in the public domain.
…Jonathan L. Zittrain, the director of Harvard Law Schoolâs Berkman Center for Internet & Society, also said yesterday that Crimson Readingâs actions appeared to be legal.
âItâs hard to see [the ISBNs] as intellectual property,â Zittrain said in an interview. He said of the Coopâs policy: âIt sort of takes the âcoâ out of âCoopâ to do that. Iâm sure the Coop isnât interested in suing its patrons and it probably should just say that it welcomes the competition and welcomes students.â
I love the Coop, but they’re just wrong on this one. Arresting students? What are you folks thinking?
Now, here is one point that Harvard might consider: ISBN’s might not be intellectual property, but I’ll bet there’s an argument that course syllabi are…and CrimsonReading.org lists the books for a lot of courses, which isn’t quite the same as publishing syllabi, but it’s pretty close. Should the university worry that its students are publishing this stuff online?
17 Responses
9/21/2007 9:38 am
I happen to think listing the readings for a course is a far cry from posting the whole syllabus. Sure, the list can help one deduce what ideas and topics will be discussed in the course, but it’s far from the definitive word. The syllabus includes readings, but also outlines grading policies and other course expectations, which can’t be inferred from the reading list.
I see no possible way the Coop can claim that ISBNs on all books they stock are the store’s intellectual property. The numbers are assigned based on nationality, published, etc., by the International ISBN Agency (ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, so yes, “International ISBN” is redundant, but there it is). As their manual says:
“Only a registration agency appointed by the International ISBN Agency can assign ISBN
registrant elements to individual publishers. Neither these registrant elements, nor any of
the corresponding ISBNs, can be sold or given to any other publisher.”
I suppose the Coop might own the rights to ISBNs on materials they actually publish, if they do publish anything.
9/21/2007 10:02 am
Oddjob, I basically agree with all your points, but I doubt that even with materials they publish the Coop could claim ISBNs as intellectual property.
9/21/2007 10:09 am
Nonexpert thoughts:
The rights the Coop might actually own would not be the ISBNs themselves, but the data that matches ISBNs with particular professors and their courses. Which edition of x textbook or y novel does Professor Z use in his course? That’s knowledge that’s not on the syllabus, and certainly not in the public domain unless Professor Z puts it there (and Harvard would have a colorable claim that even he shouldn’t be allowed to do so, since he creates his courses as part of his job).
And if the transmission of ISBN numbers is part of the Coop’s contract with the University, then they might have a claim.
Under this theory, a student would have to buy the books to learn the ISBN numbers needed for a particular course; but in doing so he would not be buying the rights to broadcast the linkages between those books and the course. … Narrowcasting of course can’t be prevented.
Any number of common-sense beliefs are violated by this theory, but I don’t think it’s laughable. If you had paid the school (whether in cash or as part of a cooperative agreement) for monopoly rights to its book lists, thus securing for yourself some amount of business, you could be forgiven for believing that in making that payment you had actually bought something that belonged to you. As an analogy — if you were a supplier of printer paper and bought the rights to be recommended to mechanics when they receive their new state-inspection machines, you could also stipulate that no other supplier could learn in advance exactly what kind of paper the machines require. This allows you to give your inventory the same head start on the market that the Coop is trying to protect.
You could also be forgiven for not wanting to be driven out of business by increasingly efficient online markets. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be.
Standing Eagle
9/21/2007 10:17 am
SE,
Interesting. Your point about ISBNs correlating, for example, to different editions might suggest why the students needed the numbers in the first place rather than, say, simply posting the titles.
9/21/2007 11:39 am
I think the issue isn’t really the Coop’s intellectual property but rather the access to the physical property they provide. They invite the general public into their building with the expectation that those who enter are there to shop from the Coop’s inventory. Anyone copying ISBN numbers obviously isn’t there with intent to buy the Coop’s items available for sale. Who says the Coop has to provide free access to non-shoppers who want data? (who says Amazon has to, either — except that they do??)
Let students who want ISBN numbers find them elsewhere, not while they’re trespassing on the Coop’s sale floor with intent to purchase elsewhere, not at the Coop, if the Coop really wants to push the issue.
But let the Coop think this through. This is a bit like international trade, isn’t it? You try to enforce regulations that give you an edge over cheaper competitors, but ultimately lower prices will win out on commodity products. If they want to keep their sales volume, they need to make their prices competitive. Their business model may need reworking.
9/21/2007 12:03 pm
Although I can claim no expertise in the area, Standing Eagle’s suggestion that the Coop might own the data that matches ISBNs to professors and their courses seems to me an interesting one. It certainly sounds more plausible than the idea that the Coop could own the ISBNs themselves (whatever that would mean). But I can’t see how this more plausible idea is anything the College could support. After all, the faculty have recently received an e-mail from Dean Pilbeam, possibly in response to student complaints, exhorting us to publish course syllabi as early as possible. Furthermore, according to the e-mail, the published syllabi are expected to be rather detailed. Indeed, although we are not told explicitly to include ISBNs in our list of reading material, one could fairly conclude from the e-mail that the more information the better. The point, after all, is to give “essential information to our students to aid them in choosing their courses.” This seems a completely laudable goal: the students are right to request the information, the College and Dean Pilbeam are right to exhort us to provide it. Since one of the essential bits of information is what exactly the course reading will be, the ISBNs should certainly be included in the published course syllabi.
Now, it could conceivably be that professors have, as Standing Eagle further suggests, some obligation not to put their course syllabi in the public domain (as opposed to on the Course Websites, which are not available outside of Harvard). I would find this obligation abhorrent and anti-intellectual if it were found to hold, but I could see some University (not Harvard, I hope!) claiming it does hold. Even if it did, though, it wouldn’t keep *Harvard students* from knowing the ISBNs for various Harvard course reading materials; and after all it was Harvard students who were collecting the information.
In short, it seems to me that if the College is serious about making it easier for students to shop and find out about their classes, as they should be, then they should also stand in favor of making it easier for the students to find out exactly what books the various classes are using. This stance would have the financial effect of making it easier for students to compare prices for books, and that might or might not be a laudable goal in itself. But it seems to me that the College should hold this position on purely academic grounds anyway. It’s simply better for the academic experience of the students.
Sean
9/21/2007 12:14 pm
There’s a simple solution here: why can’t professors put ISBN numbers for each book on their syllabi? I know from experience that you need the ISBN number to turn in your list to the Coop for book orders anyway, so it isn’t as though it would take extra work. That way student’s wouldn’t have to trespass on the Coop’s sales space for non-purchasing purposes, but they *would* have the information needed to compare prices online…
9/21/2007 12:56 pm
I just put publisher and date on the syllabus, so a simple HOLLIS search gets students there. If they can’t figure that out . . .
9/21/2007 2:55 pm
I have put ISBN numbers on some course syllabi. I haven’t done it for the current semester, but I did give the ISBN numbers to CrimsonReading.
9/21/2007 3:37 pm
I think Standing Eagle is just plain wrong. There simply is no sense in which the Coop owns the information matching faculty with course data like ISBNs. In any case, as far as I know, there is no contract between the Coop and the University. Faculty are free to use other bookstores (like the Harvard Bookstore), to tell students to use on-line booksellers, to sell books themselves (as I have done on occasion), etc.
anon 11:39 framed the issue much more correctly. It’s the same as bookstores that carry travel books not wanting faux-customers leafing through various guides and writing themselves notes on hotel recommendations, then leaving without a purchase. I seem to remember that Wordsworth (much missed bookstore in H. Sq.) used to eject people who did that.
The relation between the faculty and the Coop was based historically on the fact that the Coop provided a welcome service. They haven’t done so lately, what with under-ordering and surcharges (they asked $5 more for a textbook in my course than the publisher’s retail price). 11:39 is also right in thinking their business model needs renovating. If they don’t make some major changes, I expect the Coop textbook division will be out of business within a few years.
9/21/2007 3:47 pm
Prof. G.,
I didn’t say they DID own the data, just that they MIGHT own it.
SE
9/21/2007 8:12 pm
doesn’t barnes and noble own the coop in whole or in part?
9/21/2007 8:26 pm
Crimson reading uses a sizable portion of the profit it makes on selling these books to support a school in Zambia.
What does the Coop do with it’s profits? Which charities does it support? Perhaps more of Harvard students should consider buying books and other supplies through vendors that have low markups and who support worthwhile causes.
9/21/2007 8:33 pm
12.14 pm, rt and jr have it absolutely right. The students should organize and send a letter to the professors requesting that they publish ISBN numbers in their syllabi –which are on the web. They just need to explain that they want to give students the option of purchasing through the Coop or through an online vendor that supports schools in poor countries.
Let the professors decide whether to respond to this request and let the students decide where to spend their money and which courses to take. As for the Coop, let us hope they are not calling for a boycott from Harvard students… It’s very nice prime space that could have many valuable uses.
9/21/2007 8:34 pm
The Coop is a Cooperative. A sufficiently large number of student members could request an audit of its finances and management.
9/21/2007 10:03 pm
8:26: If I remember correctly, the Coop actually has a list in its window now of the charities it contributes to — mostly local community groups. Maybe it is down now but it was up.
B+N does not own the Coop, the Coop still exists (and still returns some money to its members, less than 20 years ago but more than 5 years ago). The Coop has somehow subcontracted the trade book business to B+N.
Remember, many book stores have gone the way of Wordsworth, i.e. dead. Profits are not high in this business now. The simple thing for the coop to do is to go out of the textbook business. I am not defending their calling the cops on students. But my sense is that they still believe they are performing a service, i.e. ordering whatever Harvard professors say is required for their course, though that information may be so inaccurate that it is hard to make a profit on it. (I.e. people will say “I am requiring X of all students,” and then on the first day of classes say that students don’t really need that book.) Where the books are foreign, the ordering and returning becomes more complex, with varying exchange rates.
The Coop has student and faculty directors. Those who are complaining about it should talk to them. They stand for election, and we all elect them. It is thankless work, as these comments show.
I suspect WG is right, and the Coop won’t be able to adapt, any more than Wordworth was able to adapt to the new world of book retailing. And many of those who think the Coop is a stupid organization because everyone should buy their books from Amazon will be complaining to Harvard in five years about how professors can require books that can’t actually be bought in Cambridge.
Except they won’t be here to complain.
9/24/2007 9:28 am
I was right! Not about the Coop owning the intellectual property right, but about the potential that they could.
From today’s Crimson:
“Jonathan L. Zittrain, the director of the Law Schoolâs Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has said: ISBNs are facts, and the unique combinations of ISBNs on reading lists are intellectual property”
He goes on to qualify my point — in order to have a claim on the data the Coop would have to have bought a *license* to it (not the intellectual property itself):
” property âbut of professors. While the Faculty can assert intellectual property rights over reading lists, the Coop cannot.”
Oops, now that I think of it perhaps the point is that even if it buys a license the Coop has to leave it to the Faculty to do the enforcing of the property right….
Good to be reminded, both in this case and the Dershowitz one, that you can’t just get someone arrested by accusing them of something.
SE