The suit filed by Faulkner Press against a local note-taking company gained national attention when it was picked up by Wired and subsequently linked to by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.

The day after the Alligator covered the issue they were kind enough to include the short version of a response from one of our officers, Patrick Flanagan. Here is the longer version of the opinion, which also touches on the substantial problems that Faulkner material has caused due to their restrictive programming:

Faulkner Press is suing Einstein’s Notes for copying class notes without the professor’s permission. Wait, what? I thought college was about passing on knowledge. I guess Faulkner Press disagrees.

Einstein’s Notes service is one that many of my friends and peers value greatly. They value it enough that they’re willing to spend $20 on a notes packet every time their class has a test. The note takers are paid well for their time, and the note buyers are satisfied with the product they receive. It’s a nice example of the free market, but Faulkner Press is upset that
“their” intellectual property is being misused.

This falls so neatly into the “Fair Use” clause of U.S. copyright law: “the fair use of a copyrighted work… for purposes such as… teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use) [and] scholarship… is not an infringement of copyright.” Furthermore, “ideas, … concepts, principles” cannot be copyrighted. And to nail the lid on the coffin, Einstein’s Notes doesn’t just blindly redistribute the source material verbatim; they offer a new product: a summary of the professor’s lecture, and a compilation of useful material for the class. They cite their sources, which is all that is required when using these materials for their notes. Case closed.

I’m actually not surprised that it’s Faulkner Press who is bringing this lawsuit. If you’ve ever used a Faulkner Press digital textbook, you know what I’m talking about. They’re obscenely overpriced, poorly programmed, and restrictive enough to be called suffocating. Their software won’t even let you select text, for fear that you’ll distribute it to the masses. Never mind that you’re a student, trying to write a 10-page philosophy paper, and you have to hand type block quotes from Socrates instead of just copy-pasting.

U.S. copyright law is far from perfect (see the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The fair use clause, however, is one of those laws where the government got something right. If Class Notes (the parent company of Einstein’s Notes) loses this case, then maybe it’s time to take a closer look at intellectual property legislation and fix it once and for all.

This is the digital millennium, and information is literally in the air. The free flow of information is absolutely critical to a democratic society. The University of Florida is a place of learning. Let’s not suffocate ourselves by depriving us of knowledge.

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The main topic in UF’s campus newspaper today was a suit from the software/textbook publisher Faulkner Press against the note-taking service Einstein’s Notes. Their article details the situation and highlights that a previous suits was unsuccessful.

This issue had been raised in the Fall of 2005 by some professors who felt their copyright was violated, also in the Alligator. One of our chapter’s founders, Gavin Baker, replied to them and argued that these companies were doing novel work by summarizing and that facts are actually not copyrightable.

It is interesting to note how the language in these two articles changed and how the emphasis has now shifted towards how lecture notes and practice questions were “copied.” That reasoning might even be successful in front of a judge, compared to the previous attempt.

Faulkner Press’ side can be heard at their site about “The Future of Higher Ed.” It is currently a sparsely populated Wordpress blog with an unrelated stock image on the front page.

The only reasonable response seems to have come from the paper’s cartoonist, who nicely showed that intellectual property protection, as a primary goal, is absolutely flawed in academia:

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“New radio regulations hurt UF-run station,” by Andrew Tan, Independent Florida Alligator, July 17, 2007.

National controversy over the regulation of Internet radio hit home this weekend as WUFT-FM Classic 89, a UF-run public radio station, stopped broadcasting online.
…Escape Media Group Chief Technology Officer Josh Greenberg said the regulations may have an adverse effect on his Web site Grooveshark, a legal music-sharing service.

Update: And they get a dart from Darts and Laurels, July 19, 2007.

These stricter regulations require stations to monitor more closely who is listening to what online. These ominous regulations would severely limit artist exposure and possibly worsen the illegal downloading problem. So we hurl this that-doesn’t-sound-like-a-fair-exchange DART at the money-grubbing company SoundExchange.

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Ed Christman, “NARM Coverage: New Laws Threaten Used CD Market,” Billboard.biz, May 1, 2007.

… Florida and Utah have passed second-hand goods legislation, sometimes referred to as pawn-shop laws, that could make the buying and selling of used CDs much more onerous to stores and less attractive to customers looking to sell music they are no longer interested in owning.

In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit, would be required to thumb-print CD sellers and get a copy of their state-issued identity documents, such as a driver’s license. Furthermore, stores could only issue store credit — not pay cash — in exchange for traded CDs, and then would be required to hold them for a 30-day period, before re-selling them.

See also posts and discussion at Ars Technica, Idolator, Slashdot, and Wired’s Listening Post. The latter confirms that the law does not apply to sales of used CDs online.

(via Boing Boing)

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Following on the resolution that UF’s Student Senate passed in May 2006, two more student governments have issued official statements of support.

• Trinity University: The Association of Student Representatives adopted its resolution on March 26, 2007.
• Oberlin College: The Student Senate adopted its resolution on March 18, 2007.

(Via Open Access News)

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A Sun editorial has a follow-up to the new psuedo-trademark rights I wrote about earlier this month:

“Counterfeit rockers,” editorial, Gainesville Sun, April 29, 2007.

The Legislature has passed a bill to make it illegal for a band to bill itself as a well known oldie group unless at least one current member actually did play in the original group.

“It’s really a consumer rip-off protection,” Jon “Bowzer” Bauman, chair of the Truth in Music Committee of The Vocal Group Hall of Fame Foundation, and a one-time member of the 1970s group Sha Na Na told reporters. Apparently, aging boomers with failing eyesight and tin ears are being duped by rockers who claim to be who they are not. Clearly this is a case for the rock police (not to be confused, of course, with the original rock band The Police).

Just how dire is this threat to rock integrity?

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From the Florida Voter Coalition at CountAllVotes.com

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