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-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
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
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.
Page 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.
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.
The 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.... (Unless it's an alphabetically-ordered phone book or something to that effect.)
Thanks 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.
Am I the only one that really has NO idea what Boundless does?
"Boundless is putting students back in control of their education." is extremely vague.
Could they possibly just summarize what their product is? I'm guessing this is some kind of e-textbook? What is a textbook replacement? Are you replacing the physical format of a textbook into an eBook? Are you proposing an alternative (like interactive learning?)
But if the textbook publishing industry is suing you, you must be doing something right.
Happy to answer. I am one of the founders of Boundless.
The first iteration of our product gave a student a 100% free alternative to buying their expensive textbook. The product is completely digital with search functionality, notes, highlights, etc. Very similar to an e-text, but a more elegant experience (and of course free!).
We did that by leveraging something called Open Educational Resources (OER). OER is open source content developed by top institutions, organizations, and educational individuals. It sits in unorganized databases which makes it hard for a student or professor to adopt. We bridge the gap between the OER content and the student.
Ultimately this is our first step. We don't consider ourselves a textbook company. No student wants to read hundreds of pages of text. Now that we have a great base of content, we will be redefining the user experience so that the user can focus on bite sized pieces of information rather than long form text.
> Everyone has a favorite teacher, but no one has a favorite textbook
I disagree. I bet if you went over to Reddit and asked on /r/math or /r/physics, you'd find plenty of people who have a favorite textbook. For example, I'd say Apostol's "Calculus", volume 1, is a favorite textbook of mine. I've read it 3 or 4 times over the last 30 years. The Feynman Lectures on Physics are another favorite of mine.
> 4x more expensive/less accessible/same form factor
(that's from their infographic, comparing textbooks in the '60s to now. It was on three lines there, which I've marked with slashes to fit the quote on one line)
Based on inflation, they should be about 6x more expensive, so if that 4x figure is right textbook prices have improved since the '60s. However, I suspect that they are a little low in their estimate here. I think prices have gone up faster than inflation.
I don't see how text books have become less accessible since the '60s.
> There’s one other major concern: textbooks are just flat-out terrible products. They’re ineffective pedagogical tools: dense collections of long-form text that fail to engage students’ wide range of learning styles
This may be true for the less technical fields, but I have yet to see anything better for, say, a rigorous upper level math course.
I agree; it's a really, really weird thing to say, especially if the person has studied computer science - maybe he's yet to read what he finds to be a good textbook? My favourite teacher in high school showed me that certain subjects can actually be interesting, intelligible and enjoyable, and my favourite textbook so far off the top of my head (The Algorithm Design Book) did the exact same.
Great and awful professors and books tend to make an impression, and people on Hacker News could go on forever on algorithm books.
To be fair, the reason you haven't seen anything better is because very few people are able to get traction in the face of deep, deep entrenchment. Have you watched Bret Victor's "Kill Math" video? Imagine if most technical courses had that kind of interactive material. But right now, they won't, because the barriers to entry are artificially high and incumbents aren't innovating.
I completely agree. I went to a university and thought the researchers they hired to teach me were, on average, terrible teachers. Fortunately the textbooks were good enough that the professor could half-assed teach the class and I could learn the material on my own. Without textbooks a university education would be a complete joke.
> I don't see how text books have become less accessible since the '60s.
Everything else has become far more accessible though.
There's no reason an electronic math textbook couldn't generate unique problems for each student and even grade them, for example. And if they could ever integrate something like Maple a lot of possibilities would open up.
I think we're already trending in that direction, though, so it's more a matter of who will build it.
No one likes the big textbook companies, but what Boundless is doing is clearly breaching copyright law. It seems they are hoping public pressure will save them, but I don't think most people are naive enough to agree the way they are doing things is ok. The open resources they are copying from, that's the way to replace textbooks.
I love that you are working on this. It's one problem that I really want fixed.
But, your description doesn't impress and convince me. I'd drop at least more than half of the document. I'd drop most of the description about the problems with current textbooks and all the vague sales pitches. I'd focus on why your solution is better.
As I am reading this, I got the impression that you don't have much except being free and online.
Where does the content come from? Are the authors a good reference? How do you plan on making money? With annoying ads?
And the lawsuit seems like a different document. Used for publicity?
[+] [-] slapshot|14 years ago|reply
But the actual complaint ( 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
Universities also consider close paraphrasing to be plagiarism: 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
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.
[+] [-] Atropos|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronwhite|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kmfrk|14 years ago|reply
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.... (Unless it's an alphabetically-ordered phone book or something to that effect.)
[+] [-] alain94040|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atonse|14 years ago|reply
"Boundless is putting students back in control of their education." is extremely vague.
Could they possibly just summarize what their product is? I'm guessing this is some kind of e-textbook? What is a textbook replacement? Are you replacing the physical format of a textbook into an eBook? Are you proposing an alternative (like interactive learning?)
But if the textbook publishing industry is suing you, you must be doing something right.
[+] [-] bbalfour|14 years ago|reply
The first iteration of our product gave a student a 100% free alternative to buying their expensive textbook. The product is completely digital with search functionality, notes, highlights, etc. Very similar to an e-text, but a more elegant experience (and of course free!).
We did that by leveraging something called Open Educational Resources (OER). OER is open source content developed by top institutions, organizations, and educational individuals. It sits in unorganized databases which makes it hard for a student or professor to adopt. We bridge the gap between the OER content and the student.
Ultimately this is our first step. We don't consider ourselves a textbook company. No student wants to read hundreds of pages of text. Now that we have a great base of content, we will be redefining the user experience so that the user can focus on bite sized pieces of information rather than long form text.
Let me know if you have other questions.
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
I disagree. I bet if you went over to Reddit and asked on /r/math or /r/physics, you'd find plenty of people who have a favorite textbook. For example, I'd say Apostol's "Calculus", volume 1, is a favorite textbook of mine. I've read it 3 or 4 times over the last 30 years. The Feynman Lectures on Physics are another favorite of mine.
> 4x more expensive/less accessible/same form factor
(that's from their infographic, comparing textbooks in the '60s to now. It was on three lines there, which I've marked with slashes to fit the quote on one line)
Based on inflation, they should be about 6x more expensive, so if that 4x figure is right textbook prices have improved since the '60s. However, I suspect that they are a little low in their estimate here. I think prices have gone up faster than inflation.
I don't see how text books have become less accessible since the '60s.
> There’s one other major concern: textbooks are just flat-out terrible products. They’re ineffective pedagogical tools: dense collections of long-form text that fail to engage students’ wide range of learning styles
This may be true for the less technical fields, but I have yet to see anything better for, say, a rigorous upper level math course.
[+] [-] kmfrk|14 years ago|reply
Great and awful professors and books tend to make an impression, and people on Hacker News could go on forever on algorithm books.
[+] [-] aaronwhite|14 years ago|reply
To be fair, the reason you haven't seen anything better is because very few people are able to get traction in the face of deep, deep entrenchment. Have you watched Bret Victor's "Kill Math" video? Imagine if most technical courses had that kind of interactive material. But right now, they won't, because the barriers to entry are artificially high and incumbents aren't innovating.
[+] [-] jcampbell1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Natsu|14 years ago|reply
Everything else has become far more accessible though.
There's no reason an electronic math textbook couldn't generate unique problems for each student and even grade them, for example. And if they could ever integrate something like Maple a lot of possibilities would open up.
I think we're already trending in that direction, though, so it's more a matter of who will build it.
[+] [-] samke3|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalr|14 years ago|reply
But, your description doesn't impress and convince me. I'd drop at least more than half of the document. I'd drop most of the description about the problems with current textbooks and all the vague sales pitches. I'd focus on why your solution is better.
As I am reading this, I got the impression that you don't have much except being free and online.
Where does the content come from? Are the authors a good reference? How do you plan on making money? With annoying ads?
And the lawsuit seems like a different document. Used for publicity?
[+] [-] danbmil99|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunahsuh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acknickulous|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttol|14 years ago|reply