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.

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:

The patents granted were widely criticized as being too trivial and too broad, allowing Blackboard to sue basically any competitor of learning management systems. Blackboard’s is the “Learning System” used by the University of Florida.

Even a few years ago such a niche topic would probably not have been taken serious by many students but the increased time spent on social networking sites and the Internet in general seems to have changed that.

The Alligator remains skeptical about any of this changing soon but of course: knowing is half the battle.

What: CopyNight Gainesville
When: Tuesday, March 25t 2008 at 7pm
Where: Tim and Terry’s (1417 NW 1st Ave.)

When: Monday Feb. 11, 6:00pm
Where: Little Hall, rm. 239

Where: Reitz Union, rm. 286
When: Monday, November 19th, 6.30pm

What: CopyNight Gainesville
When: Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 7pm
Where: Tim and Terry’s (1417 NW 1st Ave.)

Several members of Florida Free Culture attended and spoke at the FCC hearing in Tampa, so we’ll continue to watch the FCC’s actions and see how well they pay attention when the public speaks out.