Berkman Center weighs in on I.P. debate

As we mentioned earlier this week, copyright controversies seem to be popping up all over the place recently. In this morning's issue of The Crimson, Berkman's own John Palfrey, Wendy Seltzer, and clinical student Angela Kang ran an Op-Ed on the recent campus controversy regarding students copying ISBNs at the Coop.

The Coop -- the Harvard University bookstore -- asked students to leave their premises last Thursday, after citing the ISBNs of the books as their intellectual property, and claiming the student's were stealing them for their site CrimsonReading.  The students that work for the website, which aims to offer cost comparisons on textbooks, were left wondering how and why they were in violation of the store's property.

The Op-Ed cut to the chase in saying, We're not sure what "intellectual property" right the Coop has in mind, but it's none that we recognize. Nor is it one that promotes the progress of science and useful arts, as copyright is intended to do. While intellectual property may have become the fashionable threat of late, even in the wake of the Recording Industry Association of America's mass litigation campaign the catch-phrase---and the law---has its limits.

It will be interesting to see if the University accepts the store's policy, or if they step in to mediate the situation.  The Boston Globe noted today that students don't seem to be the only ones on the look-out for better deals on books: Prices of college texts have spiked so severely across the country that since January, 86 bills to make them more affordable have been filed in 27 states, including Massachusetts.

For more on the issue check out Wendy Seltzer's follow-up post on the Citizen Media Law Project Blog from this morning and stay tuned to the Berkman Blog for the latest on the story.