Major Textbook Publishers Sue Open-Education Textbook Start-Up 278
linjaaho writes "Three major textbook publishers have sued a startup company making free and open textbooks, citing 'copyright infringement,' as the company is making similar textbooks using open material. From the article: 'The publishers' complaint takes issue with the way the upstart produces its open-education textbooks, which Boundless bills as free substitutes for expensive printed material. To gain access to the digital alternatives, students select the traditional books assigned in their classes, and Boundless pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book. The company calls this mapping of printed book to open material "alignment" — a tactic the complaint said creates a finished product that violates the publishers' copyrights.'"
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:5, Insightful)
they don't have a leg to stand on.
You're applying common sense, not a wise practice when it comes to law. Especially not when it comes to "law" as practiced in the modern US. If a bunch of publishers get together and lobby aggressively I wouldn't be surprised if a court found that a sufficient degree of similarity existed, thereby violating copyright. And if the court didn't find it, well, Congress can amend the copyright law and I think the US Copyright Office can regulate matters a bit.
array of sources ... just as good ? (Score:4, Insightful)
... pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book ...
A noble intention but I am suspicious of "as good as". Pulling stuff from various sources and slapping it together quickly is not a strategy known for producing "as good as" products. Perhaps a "good enough" product though.
However is the "knitted together" text better than, or even different from, just googling and reading some of the top sites, reading various topics on wikipedia?
Also with respect to "as good as" I am *not* counting the missing homework problems against it.
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:5, Insightful)
Some open materials based on proprietary sources (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know whether this lawsuit will succeed or fail, but many open source and open materials are based on proprietary materials.
For example, much of Wikipedia is graduate students and college students taking ideas from their textbooks, compiling them and putting them into their own words.
Linux is based on a commercial operating system, and many of its best software packages are either clones of popular Windows software packages, or enhancements to academic projects (like Apache and Mozilla).
The two need each other it seems.
The point of that is that it makes sense for us to keep a profit motive for development of new proprietary materials, and over time, to migrate older knowledge to the realm of free and open learning.
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's time to end all this BS.
Just create an official "license to kill competition". It shall allow to just call a judge and cry "WHaaaa Mr. Judge! They are making me lose money! WHaaa" And the judge will just send the police.
Just make the license expensive enough. And then find a way of dealing with the thousands of jobless lawyers.
Re:No surprises here (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much sue, but license. You will have to pay a "knowledge usage" fee each time you utilize your learned knowledge for monetary gain. With the correct "lobbying" this fee will be captured on your tax form and levied based on the work you do (engineer, doctor, etc) coupled with the money you earned (salary) and the cost of the education you paid to "gain" your knowledge.
If you just happen to be smart and able to have meaningful and well-paying employment, without any identifiable higher education, then you probably just stole the information and skills from someone and will be open to punishment.
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that the open sources which contain the documentation / resources used are already out there in the wild, and no-one is suing them, then it is only the arrangement or total content aggregate that they could be suing for, since the content cannot be refuted or sued for copyright infringement, and as long as the arrangement doesn't impinge, then the fact that the content accumulated covers the same sets of topics but in the words of those already published as open content, there is no legal leg to stand on. That is what was inferred by my previous comment.
Re:Can you say "Desperation" (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you implying that only professors of a subject can serve this purpose?
Re:Non-literal copying: the choice of a bear (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim is that apart from the copyright in the particular photographs, the choice of a bear to illustrate the laws of thermodynamics is itself sufficiently original.
Honestly, that does sound like the (big, evil, monstrous, yadda, yadda, yadda) textbook publisher may have a point. There are some concepts in physics that are always illustrated in (nearly) the same way, with (nearly) identical examples. You can't talk about Maxwell's demon without a demon. Schrodinger will always have his half-dead cat. Every first-year dynamics textbook will have a race car travelling a banked, circular track riding on tires with a certain coefficient of friction.
On the other hand, I've spent a couple of decades studying and working in physics-related fields, and I've yet to come across a famous or canonical bear-catching-a-fish story in any branch of physics, let alone thermodynamics. The choice of a novel illustrative example certainly seems like a genuinely creative act on the part of the textbook's authors, and could form the basis of a legitimate complaint.
Re:The crux of the matter (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't really about copyright infringement at all. It's about an industry that is rapidly becoming obsolete, and the greedy fat cats trying to keep it going to keep getting fatter off it.
I'm also willing to bet that the textbook cartel has had their sharks circling this company for a while looking for any standing whatsoever to sue over. This is probably just the first vaguely plausible thing they've come up with.
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree.
But you see, the USA has become a fascist state. Fascism is law.
It has nothing to to do with Facts or Figures or a leg to stand on.
This now depends on what is in the Judges best interest for this case to either pass, or shut the company down.
Funny, but I posted many many times over the many years (1998) that fascism was coming to this country and that it would eventually lead to laws that prevent anyone from learning anything without a license.
We have come a long way and facism has now officially arrived. I think the land mark case was MF Global.
Billions stolen, nobody goes to jail. Not even moral law applies anymore in the USA.
It is now a land of the laws of men.
Expect very very bad things to happen if this trend isn't reversed.
(i.e. Besides the 480 Million some bullets the TSA has ordered for every single man, women dog, cat _and_ child to get it right between the eyes.)
-Hack
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boo hoo for the dinosaurs (Score:4, Insightful)
If I read TFA correctly, only open source materials are used, and they are being cited properly. There is some creative re-arrangement being done, and I would hope that the company that is doing so is copyrighting their art (similar to the copyright one can put on an anthology). The stuff should be going out under some equivalent of the GPL (which if you will recall is a use of copyright).
So what strikes me as odd is that the company is being sued for copyright infringement of what is, very clearly, their own creative work. This should not just get thrown out of court, but all the lawyers involved in filing this suit should be permanently disbarred for malpractice. Every lawyer allowed before the bar has a duty to the Court to uphold the law, which transcends any contractual or for-hire duties they may otherwise take on. We do not need, nor can we afford to have, lawyers who do not understand this basic ethic practicing in this country.