Harvard bookstore claims IP over book prices

From Techdirt ( who got it from BoingBoing). The Harvard Coop bookstore is throwing out people who take notes about book prices and ISBN's. This sort of thing is just crazy. Do they expect people to keep shopping there? I haven't seen numbers but I imagine that the Internet has had a big hit on university bookstores. Back in the day it was difficult to get pricing info and a real pain to order from other places. I remember a few feminist and independent bookstores used to work with supportive faculty to try offer some classes required texts. But now it is so much easier.

This past week I noticed a bunch of students sitting on a blanket in the main quad next to a sign saying "leave your used textbooks here and check back to see if we have something you want." This seems like a great opportunity for someone to develop a textbook exchange system. You would logon and list books you had available for free. For every book you gave away to another student you'd get "credits" which you could use to get books from others using the service. The tricky thing would be the postage and I have no solution there.

The Accidental Ball and Chain used to be a big fan of Bookcrossing which works in some vaguely similar ways (no credits though). Over the years she sent books all kinds of places (including eg Iran) and received many in return from other users. I especially enjoyed their book boxes (a box o' books organized around a theme) where you could remove books and keep them so long as you put in another on the same theme.

Comments

[Alan Wolf]

Harvard Lawyers respond to the Coop's interesting interpretation of "IP"

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519661