5 ms·
The lawsuit is mentioned in the title, but glossed over in the blog post. The blog post claims that the publishers are trying to "copyright facts." But the ac
by slapshot 15y ago
The lawsuit is mentioned in the title, but glossed over in the blog post. The blog post claims that the publishers are trying to "copyright facts."
But the actual complaint ( http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2012cv01986/393501/1/ http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-yor... ) suggests that the publishers allege much more. You don't have to agree with the publisher's claims (you obviously don't), but be fair and give the full picture.
The publishers claim that Boundless is copying the chapter titles, subtitles, subheadings, and pagination of each book, using pictures of the book as marketing materials, and then paraphrasing 100% of the text of each book.
It's true that you can't copyright facts, but paraphrasing on such a fine level is often considered copyright infringement. Even Wikipedia forbids close paraphrasing unless the original material is in the public domain or there is absolutely no other way to express it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing
Universities also consider close paraphrasing to be plagiarism:
http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_paraphrase.htm http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_par...
And a court 100-ish years ago found that a close copy of an economics textbook was a form of copyright infringement, in a very similar pre-digital case (it's not like the digital era is the first time that people have noticed that books are expensive):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Co._v._King http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Co._v._King
Should that doctrine apply here? Is it a good doctrine in the digital era? There's room for debate. But you'd never know that from the blog post.
- aaronwhite 15y ago(I am one of the founders of Boundless) Believe me, we would love to go into very, very specific detail on exactly what is covered in the complaint, unfortunately talking publicly about details in the suit is taboo/off-limits. Further, our response isn't yet filed, which would provide some of that detail. But it's telling they chose to pursue litigation instead of any other form of out-reach.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago> But it's telling they chose to pursue litigation instead of any other form of out-reach. Yeah, but what it's telling of is similarly open to debate. You'd probably say that that is proves they can't innovate or something in that direction. They might say that it's such an obvious and easy win that they don't even need to bother discussing it with you.
- aaronwhite 15y agoI'd say it's what happens when business models are threatened. In terms of 'obvious' we & our team of lawyers strongly disagree.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoWell of course you disagree. I'm only pointing out that your blog post and your comment above don't represent a neutral view of the likely outcomes of this litigation given the evidence we have at hand. I'm not picking sides here, because I don't know any of the facts, and I'm not suggesting you're a bad person for your bias. Any of us would be equally biased in your shoes. I'm just trying to point out a more balanced view than what you're giving us. Truth-seeking, in other words. Also, it's worth noting that a violent reaction to a business model being threatened is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, let's suppose someone is looting your shop. Do you allow them to do so, or do you take out the baseball bat behind the counter? If the looter said, "Hey, you're only getting out that bat because your business model is being threatened," that would probably not be compelling to you or to any bystanders that happened to be about. Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that what you are doing is equivalent to looting. I'm only trying to point out that other readers ought not take your side simply because you think you're threatening someone's business model.
- alain94040 15y agoIf I was your lawyer I'd tell you to stop blogging or commenting on HN immediately. You're about to lose big. Take it from someone who has had their word used against himself 10 years later.
- jcc80 15y agoI'm curious if you've reached out to the big players in the textbook oligopoly before this? As to their lawsuit, good luck. I never understood why my books were so expensive (early 2000s). Of course if you're using the chapter titles of their texts as someone mentioned, I'm not an expert on copyright law, but it just feels wrong.
- nostromo 15y agoReally? To me it sounds very similar to Cliffs Notes, which summarizes, chapter by chapter, books covered by copyright. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Book-Summary.id-172,pageNum-1.html http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/The-Lord-o... Summarizing may legally be different than re-writing however, so it'll be interesting to see where the case goes.
- aaronwhite 15y agoI'd love to get into it, and I can say we aren't rewriting their content.
- tptacek 15y agoThe publishers claim doesn't hang on you rewriting their content. They say you've "[copied] the precise selection, structure, organization, and depth of coverage in [their] textbooks and mapped in substitute text, right down to duplicating [the publishers] pagination", and that you "[took] hundreds of topics, sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics that comprise [the publishers] textbooks and copied them into Boundless texts, even presenting them in the same order, and keying their placement to [publishers] actual pagination"; also, that you "[copied] or [paraphrased] with respect to the substance of hundreds of photographs, illustrations, captions, and other original aspects of [publishers] textbooks". Look, most of us on HN have read many college textbooks. I think we all recognize that way more goes into a textbook than just the prose. I'm not judging you, just message-board-nerding your comment here. This is pretty common in threads about legal actions. "We didn't do XXYM", where /\AXX..\Z/ is what's been alleged. Allowing Smokey the Thermodynamics Bear was a super bad idea, by the way.
- tptacek 15y agoThe textbook publishers haven't gone into very, very specific detail yet; they've only provided the amount of detail required to file a suit against Boundless. If you've infringed their content, for instance by knowingly paying contractors to create 1:1 versions of copyrighted textbooks down to specific analogies and figures (like the Smokey the Thermodynamics Bear), why would it be on them to pursue any other form out outreach? You'd have committed a tort against them. They're entitled to relief. It's on you not to violate their copyright. It's a little annoying that you're trying to leverage people's sentiment about textbook publishers so actively. Right is right and wrong is wrong, even when we don't like the people who've been wronged. It's actually even more wrong, since it casts a pall over everyone else trying to modernize the economics of textbooks.
- Natsu 15y agoYou appear to be rushing to judgement by saying "they're entitled to relief." The items in the complaint are all allegations which have yet to be proven in a court of law. I'm hoping that you meant that to be part of your hypothetical statement and simply got carried away. Infringement is not necessarily a simple matter. Oracle pointed to what appeared to be direct copying of Java files by Google. But the truth turned out to be considerably more complex. The result is still uncertain, but there are good reasons to question whether even something like that will be enough to support a claim of infringement. Now, I don't know how things will play out in this case. But that's my point, because none of us know. We don't have to pick sides today, though.
- Atropos 15y agoPage 15 of the complaint is fairly damming. Apparently "Campbells Biology" uses a bear eating a fish + running to explain thermodynamics and even this example appears in their version... It might possibly be legal, but I feel it shouldn't be.
- tptacek 15y agoSimilarly (from one page later): a Psych textbook used Brahms to illustrate "Sleep disorders" (the general idea), because he apparently suffered from sleep apnea. The Boundless text apparently also chose Brahms to illustrate "sleep disorders".
- aaronwhite 15y agoAgain, at the moment, only half the story is being shared. We look forward to publicizing our side once we can!
- tptacek 15y agoBut you're the one who publicized it! We're only talking about it because you submitted this one-sided blog post. You shouldn't be surprised that a bunch of message board nerds would actually track the filing down.
- Estragon 15y agoWhat is the law regarding copying the fine-scale structure of a book but rewriting it/redoing the pictures?
- tptacek 15y agoIt does not in & of itself appear promising for Boundless.
- kmfrk 15y agoThe ruling that allows copying facts from others is SCOTUS's (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 111 S.Ct. 1282 (1991). As you imply, the ordering of the facts constitute a creative expression, which is not the same as an arbitrary arrangement of facts: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-you-copy-raw-data-from-a-protected-database.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-you-copy-raw-data.... (Unless it's an alphabetically-ordered phone book or something to that effect.)
- tptacek 15y ago"Rural's white pages do not meet the constitutional or statutory requirements for copyright protection". ... "This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions. The first is that facts are not copyrightable; the other, that compilations of facts generally are." ... "The key to resolving the tension lies in understanding why facts are not copyrightable. The sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author."
- alain94040 15y agoThanks for the informative link. From the complaint, the evidence is pretty clear that it's a copy with a paraphrasing. Even their web site (according to the complaint) boasted that as a school teacher, you don't have to change your book, theirs covers the same content in the same order, just free.