pearson – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Absolutely Terrible Textbook Publishing Giant Pearson Wants To Make Everything Even Worse With NFTs

from the making-nfts-even-worse dept

Pretty much everyone who has ever gone to college hates educational publishers. There’s an oligopoly of just five giant publishers, and they long ago learned that they are in the best market ever: the buyers of their textbooks (the students) have no choice and are forced to buy the books if their professors assign them — and more such books will get sold every semester that the professor requires it. Therefore, textbook prices are insane by any imaginable standard. And, for decades, they kept getting higher — massively outpacing tons of other goods. For unclear reasons, the never ending march upwards in book pricing finally seemed to hit a ceiling around 2016, and prices seem to have somewhat leveled out since then. This chart from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is really pretty striking:

And, while publishers claim that the shift to digital textbooks (partially accelerating by remote learning during the pandemic) has resulted in a decline in student spending over the last five years, the College Board’s latest estimates are still that students will spend an average of $1240 per year on textbooks and supplies. That’s… a lot.

While there are some considerate professors out there who take into account the cost of textbooks (and a very rare few who will only require open access textbooks), most don’t seem to much care. They assign the books they want, the students are required to buy them, and so the publishers just keep raising the prices. Of course, the other way that students try to save money is by buying used textbooks. The savings are not always that significant, but when you’re talking about such large numbers, it can still make a huge difference.

Pearson, the largest of the Big 5 textbook publishers, also has a longstanding reputation for being particularly evil and uncaring. A decade ago, we wrote about how it had sent a single DMCA notice that resulted in 1.5 million teacher and student blogs being deleted. The company also was a key plaintiff in suing a startup that tried to offer free alternatives to super expensive textbooks (the lawsuit was eventually settled with the startup shifting business models, before it was acquired and its cheaper textbooks were shut down).

But, the most evil thing we’ve seen Pearson do was, back in 2019, when it announced it was so annoyed by the used textbook market digging into its never ending profits, and that it was going to switch all its textbooks to non-resalable digital textbooks. For the books it did print, it was going to try to shift to a rental only system. You pay for the textbook for a semester and then you return it. To Pearson. Who can resell it.

Since then, digital scarcity in the form of NFTs has come and gone as the new hotness. And while I still think there’s something interesting about NFTs (and am still working on a big paper about the pros and cons of NFTs), Pearson, in a manner only it could find reasonable, is embracing NFTs… to fuck over students even more.

The print editions of Pearson’s titles — such as “Fundamentals of Nursing,” which sells new for £57.99 ($70.88) — can be resold several times to other students without making the London-based education group any money. As more textbooks move to digital, CEO Andy Bird wants to change that.

“In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” he told reporters following the London-based company’s interim results on Monday, talking about technological opportunities for the company.

“The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life,” by tracking the material’s unique identifier on the ledger from “owner A to owner B to owner C,” said Bird, a former Disney executive.

I mean, I kinda have to hand it to Mr. Bird, the former Disney exec. Usually, these kinds of execs at least try to hide how fucking evil and greedy they are. Andy Bird doesn’t give a shit.

So, here’s the thing. The power of NFTs to track resales and allow the content creator to participate in later sales is often touted as a benefit of NFTs. But, the reason it’s seen that way is because when done for digital artwork it benefits the artist, who sometimes has to sell their works pretty cheaply upfront.

This, is not that.

This is a company that already has jacked up prices to ridiculous levels on a captive market that is effectively forced to purchase at whatever price the publisher sets — and now wanting to “diminish the secondary market” and to track and take a cut of any future sale.

That’s not the power of blockchains and NFTs. When people talk about the useful aspects of those technologies (to the extent there are useful aspects) it’s to enable greater ownership, not less. It’s to enable greater independence from giant corporations, not more. The reason NFT resale bounties work is because everyone feels that it’s fair, and it creates a seamless way to further compensate an artist who most buyers want to support. Not to funnel more cash to a giant, greedy, evil company that is already sucking students dry.

What Pearson is looking to do is to make everyone hate Pearson that much more.

Filed Under: andy bird, nft, nfts, resale, secondary market, textbooks
Companies: pearson

The Death Of Ownership: Educational Publishing Giant Pearson To Do Away With Print Textbooks (That Can Be Resold)

from the you-don't-own-anything dept

It sometimes is difficult to get people to understand just how >utterly insane the college textbook market is. You have a captive audience who has no choice but to purchase what the professor requires (which is why it’s doubly lame when professors require their own books). But even people who went to college a few decades ago may not be aware of just how much textbook prices have kept rising. A study from 2015 showed that college textbook prices had risen over 1000% since 1977. 1,000%.

Another BLS study from 2016 showed that, in the education space, the price of textbooks had gone up even faster than the cost of tuition (which is also skyrocketing).

In short: college textbooks are crazy, crazy expensive. And one way that people have dealt with this over the years is (1) by buying used textbooks, or (2) by selling back the textbooks at the end of the semester (or in some cases, both). However, that’s the one factor that’s acted as competition to the textbook market.

And the publishers want to do away with it.

The largest educational textbook publisher, Pearson, has now announced that it’s going to phase out print textbooks and move solely to electronic textbooks. If you actually want a physical textbook, you’ll only be able to “rent” it:

Pearson said students would only be able to rent physical textbooks from now on, and they would be updated much less frequently.

The British firm hopes the move will make more students buy its e-textbooks which are updated continually.

There’s an argument that ebooks have certain advantages — and can be updated much more quickly. Also carrying around a ton of textbooks can be a pain. But, we’re once again left in a world where the concept of “ownership” is left open. I still have a bunch of college textbooks that I sometimes even refer back to. But under this system, if you stop paying your “subscription” fees, those can go away.

And, yes, there’s value in embracing a more digital future — but it’s difficult to believe that Pearson is truly doing this to improve the value for students, rather than just upending the older market order, and taking away the ability for people to own and to resell textbooks.

Filed Under: captive markets, copyright, monopoly pricing, ownership, rentals, subscriptions, textbooks
Companies: pearson

Publishers Actively Monitoring Testing Students' Social Media Posts For Possible Cheating

from the to-maintain-test-integrity-but-also-because-we-can dept

Major corporations are actively monitoring social media during standardized tests. This is being done to “protect” the “integrity” of test questions and answers. None of this is particularly surprising, other than the fact that a member of school administration was the one to blow the whistle on it.

Students in New Jersey are in the middle PARCC testing right now. This is a new standardized test which is administered by Pearson. It’s not without its detractors; many parents are opting their kids out of the test, and after what Pearson just did I’m sure the number will grow.

A blogger by the name of Bob Braun got his hands on an email one NJ school district superintendent sent out to a mailing list. Said email discusses a dire “security breach” in which a student tweeted a mention of the recent PARCC test.

The superintendent’s email wasn’t sent to remind teaching staff to keep a better eye on testing students. It was sent to inform the rest of them about a situation she (Elizabeth Jewett) found unacceptable. [all emphasis hers]

Good morning all,

Last night at 10 PM, my testing coordinator received a call from the NJDOE [New Jersey Department of Education] that Pearson had initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school. The information the NJDOE initially called with was that there was a security breach DURING the test session, and they suggested the student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. After further investigation on our part, it turned out that the student had posted a tweet (NO PICTURE) at 3:18PM (after school) that referenced a PARCC test question. The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent — who was obviously concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by the DOE. The DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during PARCC testing. I have to say that I find this disturbing — and if our parents were concerned before about a conspiracy with all the student data, I am sure I will be receiving more letters of refusal once this gets out (not to mention the fact that the DOE wanted us to also issue discipline to the student). I thought this was worth sharing with the group.

Well, the news has gotten out, spreading from Bob Braun’s blog to the New York Times and Washington Post. Pearson remains unapologetic for its protection of its test turf, noting that it only monitors public social media posts and cross-references those to ensure it’s only reporting currently-testing students to various education agencies. All well and good, but when a private company wields the power to nudge public schools into disciplining students for so-called “security breaches,” it’s a bit of a problem.

This widespread coverage has prompted several educational entities to take action.

In response to parent concerns, states using Pearson’s new PARCC exam did ask the company to stop cross-checking the names of students suspected of making inappropriate posts against the company’s list of registered test-takers. And New Jersey officials said Thursday that they would review the monitoring process to make sure student privacy is not compromised.

But Pearson isn’t the only company keeping an eye on students for school administrators. Politico’s coverage contains statements from a number of social media monitoring companies that provide surveillance tools and reporting to a variety of institutions.

Caveon is monitoring social networks on behalf of Pearson to safeguard against leaks of Common Core testing questions. Others — like the infamous Geo Listening — are there simply to monitor and report.

Enter the surveillance services, which promise to scan student posts around the clock and flag anything that hints at bullying, violence or depression. The services will also flag any post that could tarnish the reputation of either the student or the educational institution. They’ll even alert administrators to garden-variety teenage hijinks, like a group of kids making plans to skateboard on school property .

Some of the monitoring software on the market can track and log every keystroke a student makes while using a school computer in any location, including at home. Principals can request text alerts if kids type in words like “guns” or “drugs,” or browse websites about anorexia or suicide. They can even order up reports identifying which students fritter away hours on Facebook and which buckle down to homework right after dinner.

Other programs scan all student emails, text messages and documents sent on a school’s online platform and alert school administrators — or law enforcement — to any that sound inappropriate.

Some of the tools run covertly. Others are expressly pointed out by administration to increase the deterrent factor. Some even go so far as to cross-reference multiple social media accounts in order to strip away students’ anonymity on networks where no “real name” is required.

These companies generate tons of data and possible “hits,” but how useful are they? Gaggle, a service that scans emails, texts and discussion boards for “anything inappropriate,” says it sends “thousands” of alerts to schools every year. But its contribution to a better-behaved student body is decidedly minimal.

In Deerfield, Gaggle has unearthed just one serious incident in the past the 18 months — an eighth-grader emailing a nude photo of herself, [Deerfield Superintendent Michael] Lubelfeld said.

The same goes for the other monitoring software deployed by Lubelfeld’s school district — which monitors students’ computer usage. Only a “few violations” have been detected despite its constant presence.

Sure, the accounts may be public and there’s no expectation of privacy in tweets, Facebook posts and school computer usage, but Pearson’s monitoring didn’t restrict itself to testing hours or even, indeed, school hours. The scope of these companies’ surveillance lends itself to tons of false positives, and this can have a very negative effect on students who are going to find themselves punished for off-campus behavior — or worse, for doing nothing wrong at all.

Filed Under: cheating, monitoring, privacy, social media, standardized tests, surveillance
Companies: pearson

from the $1.3-billion-is-a-motive-with-a-universal-adapter dept

The FBI is suddenly very interested in the Los Angeles School District’s $1.3 billion iPad purchase. Earlier this fall, the LASD board voted to lower retention periods on email to one year, bringing it conveniently back in line with the district’s policy, but more to the point, hopefully ensuring that it wouldn’t be embarrassed again by emails older than 365 days.

The decision comes less than three weeks after KPCC published two-year-old internal emails that raised questions about whether Superintendent John Deasy’s meetings and discussions with Apple and textbook publisher Pearson influenced the school district’s historic $500 million technology contract.

What’s detailed in these emails appears to be the impetus for the following:

L.A. school district officials turned over 20 boxes of documents Monday in response to a federal grand jury subpoena for documents related to its troubled iPad project, officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon.

The subpoena asked for documents related to the bidding process as well as to the winning bidders in the $1.3-billion effort to provide a computer to every student, teacher and campus administrator.

The contract, approved in June 2013, was with Apple to supply iPads; Pearson provided the curriculum as a subcontractor.

LASD’s attempt to put some sort of device in every one of its students’ hands has failed miserably. Students cracked the school’s proprietary lockdown measures within days of receiving them, loading up the tablets with unapproved software and photos, all the while browsing a now-uncensored web.

The district’s tech distribution plan has now ground to a halt. The allegedly crooked superintendent behind the iPad/Pearson partnership has since resigned and only 91,000 of the 650,000 iPads destined for students and teachers have actually been purchased. The district is now giving schools the option of picking up cheaper Chromebooks, which would have been a great idea if only the district hadn’t previously spent money purchasing laptops that were pricier than the 768iPads(whichalsocomebundledwith768 iPads (which also come bundled with 768iPads(whichalsocomebundledwith200 worth of Pearson software — software found to be mostly useless by evaluators, who noted that only one classroom in the 245 surveyed was actually using it for daily work).

The new superintendent (who inherited former superintendent John Deasy’s possibly illegal mess), Ramon Cortines, states that the iPad program is now off the table completely.

The morning after the FBI seized the documents, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he was shelving the contract.

Cortines said his decision was not based on the surprise visit by FBI agents to district headquarters.

Yes, well, maybe not “based” entirely on that, but the FBI’s removal of 20 file boxes of documents related to the iPad purchases certainly must have played a small part. Now, we’ll have to see what the FBI uncovers as a previous investigation by the LA County district attorney’s office found no evidence of wrongdoing — or at least, nothing wrong enough to result in criminal charges.

While the intention of the tech rollout was good (put devices in the hands of students who couldn’t otherwise afford them), everything else about it was wrong, not the least of which was the former superintendent’s cozy relationship with the two primary vendors. Nearly useless software tethered to locked down devices ensured that the only beneficiaries of this project were those selling hardware and software. This was $1.3 billion spent with little more to show for it than an open FBI investigation — hardly the sort of results anyone could call “encouraging.”

Filed Under: fbi, ipads, john deasy, lasd, los angeles school disstrict
Companies: apple, pearson

from the more-smoke-and-mirrors dept

For decades now, we keep hearing various “copyright intensive” companies whining to the press and politicians about how the “biggest threat” they face is continued copyright infringement. We hear about how it’s undermining not just their business, but entire economic sectors, the basis of capitalism and the fundamental rule of law. Copyright infringement, we are told, is one of the largest risks to the economy and society that you could possibly imagine. We’ve long questioned the validity of those claims, especially since history has shown that the industry cries wolf fairly frequently and has always been wrong. Most famously, of course, the MPAA’s Jack Valenti told Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” That was in 1982. In 1986, the home video market — which the VCR created — made more money for the MPAA’s studios than the box office did. It’s tough to believe the “threat” claims when they’re always wrong.

But, the “copyright intensive” industries just keep on making those claims, and there’s always some in the press and among elected officials who either don’t know or don’t care about the past (or technology or reality) and automatically believe those claims. They just assume that of course copyright infringement must be a huge threat because these companies say so.

A new study, however, found a pretty good way to evaluate the reality of that threat. Jonathan Band and Jonathan Gerafi realized that a good “independent” third party to evaluate the risk and threat of copyright infringement would be investment analysts. Their only stake in the game is whether or not the company is going to do well or poorly. If the perceived risk and threat was real, they’d certainly be letting everyone know. So, Band and Gerafi have produced a new research report studying equity research reports issued over the last quarter for eight of the top companies in the so-called “copyright intensive industries.”

The choice of companies is interesting, because all eight are among those that regularly scream the loudest about the “threats” of infringement: Sony (owner of Sony Music and Sony Pictures), Vivendi (owner of Universal Music), Disney, Viacom (who also owns Paramount), Microsoft, Adobe, Pearson and Reed Elsevier. If you’re keeping track, that’s basically three of the largest movie studios, two of the largest music labels, two of the largest software companies and two of the largest publishers. If copyright infringement was really this existential threat they’ve all been screaming about, certainly it would show up in the equity analysts’ reports, right?

Well, let’s take a look at the findings:

And, in case you were wondering, the reports that didn’t list copyright infringement as a risk (i.e., nearly all of them) did list out a variety of other factors. It wasn’t just a case where they weren’t covering risks at all. They carefully looked at the market, and didn’t seem to think infringement was a real risk at all.

And, it’s important to note that since these are all public companies, the execs at those companies often spend a lot of time “educating” the analysts about the state of their business. In fact, in the annual reports for six of the eight companies listed, the companies themselves do list infringement as a major risk. It just looks like the analysts looked at the detail and simply didn’t see any legitimate threat in most of the cases.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright intensive industries, equity analysts, infringement, jonathan band, jonathan gerafi, risk
Companies: adobe, disney, elsevier, microsoft, paramount, pearson, reed elsevier, sony, sony music, sony pictures, universal music, viacom, vivendi

Textbook Publisher Pearson Takes Down 1.5 Million Teacher And Student Blogs With A Single DMCA Notice

from the 38-year-old-content-in-a-5-year-old-post-equals-1.5-million-dead-blogs dept

If there's one thing we've seen plenty of here at Techdirt, it's the damage a single DMCA takedown notice can do. From shuttering a legitimate ebook lending site to removing negative reviews to destroying a user's Flickr account to knocking a copyright attorney's site offline, the DMCA notice continues to be the go-to weapon for copyright defenders. Collateral damage is simply shrugged at and the notices continue to fly at an ever-increasing pace.

Textbook publisher Pearson set off an unfortunate chain of events with a takedown notice issued aimed at a copy of Beck's Hoplessness Scale posted by a teacher on one of Edublogs’ websites (You may recall Pearson from such other related copyright nonsense as The $180 Art Book With No Pictures and No Free Textbooks Ever!). The end result? Nearly 1.5 million teacher and student blogs taken offline by Edublogs' host, ServerBeach. James Farmer at wpmu.org fills in the details.

In case you don’t already know, we’re the folks not only behind this site and WPMU DEV, but also Edublogs… the oldest and second largest WordPress Multisite setup on the web, with, as of right now 1,451,943 teacher and student blogs hosted.

And today, our hosting company, ServerBeach, to whom we pay $6,954.37 every month to host Edublogs, turned off our webservers, without notice, less than 12 hours after issuing us with a DMCA email.

Because one of our teachers, in 2007, had shared a copy of Beck’s Hopelessness Scale with his class, a 20 question list, totalling some 279 words, published in 1974, that Pearson would like you to pay $120 for.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that Pearson somehow feels that a 38-year-old questionnaire is worth $120, and the fact that the targeted post was originally published in 2007, there's still the troubling question as to why ServerBeach felt compelled to take down 1.5 million blogs over a single DMCA notice. There's nothing in the DMCA process that demands an entire “ecosystem” be killed off to eliminate a single “bad apple.” This sort of egregious overcompliance gives certain copyright holders all the encouragement they need to continue to abuse the DMCA takedown system.

Making this whole catastrophe even worse is the fact that Edublogs already has a system in place to deal with copyright-related complaints. As the frontline for 1.5 million blogs, Edublogs is constantly fighting off scrapers and spam blogs (splogs) who siphon off content. The notice sent to Edublogs had already been dealt with and the offending post removed, but these steps still weren't enough.

So, yesterday, when we got a DMCA notice from our hosts, we assumed it was probably a splog, but it turned out it wasn’t, rather just a blog from back in 2007 with a teacher sharing some materials with their students…

And the link they complained about specifically is still on Google cache, so you can review it for yourself, until Pearson’s lawyers get Google to take that down… or maybe Google will get shut down themselves 😉

So we looked at it, figured that whether or not we liked it Pearson were probably correct about it, and as it hadn’t been used in the last 5 years ’splogged’ the site so that the content was no longer available and informed ServerBeach.

Clearly though that wasn’t good enough for Serverbeach who detected that we still had the file in our Varnish cache (nevermind that it was now inaccessible to anyone) and decided to shut us down without a word of warning.

Well, there actually was a “word of warning.” Farmer received the following notice that clearly states ServerBeach's DMCA policy, which, unbelievably, entails taking entire servers offline in order to “comply” with DMCA notices. For $75,000 a year, you'd think Edublogs would be entitled to a bit more nuance.

As for Pearson, it's a shame to see a zero-tolerance, all-uses-are-infringing attitude superseding any sort of educational benefit gained from being included in a teacher's class materials. Taking a look at the original post (below), it appears to be no different than a teacher photocopying course materials for attending students.

Hosting it online may make the test infinitely distributable, but there's no indication this was the teacher's intent. One of several problems in copyright law is the fact that what appears to be fair use to the layman is usually illegal. And the unintended consequences of actions taken in good faith tends to include a ton of collateral damage — damages which usually far outweigh any perceived losses from non-commercial infringement. Because of this, hosting companies tend to prefer harming a relationship with a paying customer to finding their safe harbors under attack. For the sake of a 120paper,ServerBeachwasmorethanwillingtodropa120 paper, ServerBeach was more than willing to drop a 120paper,ServerBeachwasmorethanwillingtodropa75,000/year customer. Despite all the whining, copyright still has plenty of power. Too bad it's so easily abused.

Filed Under: beck's hopelessness scale, censorship, copyright, dmca, edublogs, takedowns
Companies: pearson

Open Textbook Startup Sued For Allegedly Copying 'Distinctive Selection, Arrangement, and Presentation' Of Facts From Existing Titles

from the bear-facts dept

The Boycott Elsevier movement discussed here on Techdirt several times was born of a frustration at the high prices of academic journals. But another area arguably afflicted even more is that of textbooks for higher education:

> According to The College Board, the average college student spends over $1,000 per year on textbooks. At community colleges, the cost of textbooks alone can often exceed 50% of a student’s overall educational expenses. > > Is it any wonder that 7 in 10 college students have skipped buying a required text due to price concerns?

Just as with the publishing of academic papers, that translates into very fat profit margins:

> The textbook publishing market is an oligopoly, with over 80% of the textbook market controlled by the top 4 publishers: Pearson, Cengage, Wiley and McGraw-Hill. > > These publishers have been able to maintain nearly 65% gross margins on what is essentially a commodity product. They have continued to raise prices for this stagnant product in the face of innovation in every other information related industry, growing at a rate of 3 times inflation.

Those figures are found in a blog post from a startup called Boundless that is “committed to bringing educational content into the 21st century,” by offering free texts for core higher education subjects that are designed to replace expensive traditional titles.

That hasn’t gone down too well with three of the leading publishers of textbooks — Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education — which have just sued Boundless:

> Defendant is in the business of distributing online textbooks that it claims serve as “substitutes” for Plaintiffs’ textbooks. Rather than produce its own textbooks, however, Defendant steals the creative expression of others, willfully and blatantly violating Plaintiffs’ intellectual property rights in several of their highest profile, signature textbooks. Defendant exploits and profits from Plaintiffs’ successful textbooks by making and distributing the free “Boundless Version” of those books, in the hope that it can later monetize the user base that it draws to its Boundless Web Site.

The nature of what Boundless is alleged to have “stolen” is rather unusual:

> Notwithstanding whatever use it claims to make of “open source educational content,” Defendant distributes “replacement textbooks” that are created from, based upon, and overwhelmingly similar to Plaintiffs’ textbooks. Defendant generates these “replacement textbooks” by hiring individuals to copy and paraphrase from Plaintiffs’ textbooks. Defendant boasts that they copy the precise selection, structure, organization and depth of coverage of Plaintiffs’ textbooks and then map-in substitute text, right down to duplicating Plaintiffs’ pagination. Defendant has taken hundreds of topics, sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics that comprise Plaintiffs’ textbooks and copied them into the Boundless texts, even presenting them in the same order, and keying their placement to Plaintiffs’ actual pagination. Defendant has engaged in similar copying or paraphrasing with respect to the substance of hundreds of photographs, illustration, captions, and other original aspects of Plaintiffs’ textbooks.

So the accusation seems to be that Boundless books are functional “clones” of existing textbooks, with the same overall organization and pagination, but with different words filling out the topics, sub-topics and sub-sub-topics. The question then becomes whether there is copyright in that arrangement.

The plaintiffs are also concerned about what they term “photographic paraphrasing”:

> An example of the obvious nature of Defendant’s photographic paraphrasing can be found in Chapter 8 of the authentic version of Campbell’s Biology where Plaintiff Pearson and its authors describe the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. To exemplify those laws, Plaintiff Pearson and its authors included two photographs, one of a bear catching and eating a fish, and another of a bear running. Plaintiff Pearson and its authors could have used any one of a universe of possible photographic subjects to demonstrate the laws of thermodynamics, but, based on the manner in which they wished to express their aesthetic and scholarly judgments, they opted for the bear engaged in these activities. In Chapter 8 of the Boundless Version of Cambell’s Biology, Defendant also discusses the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Defendant also includes two photographs to exemplify these laws, but instead of basing its selection and ordering on their own aesthetic and scholarly judgments, the two photographs Defendant includes are also of a bear eating a fish and a bear running, reflecting only the previously made creative, scholarly and aesthetic judgments of the authors and editors of Campbell’s Biology.

Is the use of a bear eating a fish a creative choice? Or is the creativity only in how the bear and the fish are depicted? In many ways, this is the same question put to a UK judge recently concerning a photo with a red double-decker bus crossing a bridge in London. In that case, rather surprisingly, the judge found that you could copyright the basic idea of a photograph.

In response to the publishers’ lawsuit, Boundless says:

> We’re currently preparing our full response, and we believe that the allegations in this lawsuit are without merit and we will defend our company and mission vigorously.

So it sounds as if we may get a chance to see where a US judge stands on that key issue of the idea/expression dichotomy in the case of academic textbooks and pictures of bears. This could be interesting.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: academics, education, textbooks
Companies: boundless, cengage, elsevier, macmillan, mcgraw-hill, pearson, wiley

Top Public School Signs Multi-Million Dollar Deal To Copyright & Sell Its Curriculum

from the progress? dept

If you go back to the original intent of copyright law, it was to improve learning and knowledge. “Promoting the progress of science” really mean “knowledge” at the time it was written. But, these days, we’ve lost pretty much all touch with that original intention. Last year, we noted that there was a growing battle over whether or not teachers could sell their lesson plans, with some districts claiming copyright over all teacher curricula and lesson plans to make sure that only they could determine how those plans were used. Of course, in the past (and, for many, the present) teachers often freely shared curricula and lesson plans with each other, in an effort to spread the knowledge and help each other out.

But throw in a bit of copyright, and a chance to “profit” — even for a public school — and apparently the whole concept of sharing gets tossed out the window. Kevin Donovan alerts us to the news that publishing giant Pearson has signed a multi-million dollar deal with a public school district. Basically, Pearson is giving the Montgomery County Public Schools $2.25 million for the right to their curricula, which it will sell. The schools will also get a 3% royalty. Pearson can change the curricula if it wants, so it might not even be what the teachers there put together, but they’re apparently trying to build up a big brand around this school district, which tends to do well in various metrics.

Of course, some people are quite uncomfortable with this. Now the teachers won’t be able to share the curriculum they themselves develop. And that could come back to haunt them. Will teachers at other schools be willing to share their own curricula with schools that are locking down and selling their own? One of the dissenting school board members (only two were against the deal) is reasonably worried that deals like this may turn teachers into sales people, rather than teachers.

Filed Under: copyright, curriculum, education, lesson plans, public schools
Companies: montgomery county public schools, pearson

Does Sale Of Dow Jones Mean The End Of The Paywall?

from the freedom dept

With News Corp.’s purchase of Dow Jones now all but certain, there’s a lot of discussion about whether Rupert Murdoch will pull a Mikhail Gorbachev and tear down that (pay)wall at the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday we argued that if the Financial Times wants to raise its profile in the US, it should do just that, as a way of differentiating itself from the Journal. At this point, there’s no way of knowing whether Murdoch will make the move first and preempt Pearson (parent company of the Financial Times). You have to figure that he has other things on his mind right now than how best to monetize the Wall Street Journal online. But, seeing as part of the deal’s rationale is to bolster the credibility of Fox’s forthcoming business channel, it makes sense to make the Journal’s content more widely available. Another possibility, put forward by the founder of MarketWatch (also a Dow Jones property), is to tie MarketWatch in with Fox, leaving the Journal as it is, a premium offering for non-retail investors. But, realistically, the MarketWatch brand doesn’t carry near the value that the Journal does — if Murdoch is really intent on bolstering its business channel, it has to do it by leveraging the Journal.

Filed Under: media
Companies: dow jones, news corp, pearson

Pearson Mulls Possibilities To Exploit News Corp./Dow Jones

from the the-next-move dept

By all accounts, News Corp.’s bid for Dow Jones is coming down to the wire, although the latest indication is that the deal is likely to go through. If the deal does happen, one of the big winners could be Pearson, the publisher of the Financial Times, which has been making an aggressive push to expand its global presence and present itself as an alternative to the Wall Street Journal. Already, the company has indicated that it would like to partner up with another major media organization in order to promote its brand. One possibility would be to partner up with CNBC if News Corp. decides to sever Dow Jones’ relationship with the business news network. In addition to striking such a partnership, Pearson should be looking to open up its content as a way of differentiating the Financial Times from the Wall Street Journal. At the moment, the sites of both papers are largely locked down, with most content available to subscribers only. Were the Financial Times to take down this wall, opening up its best content to the public, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the paper usurping some of the Journal’s influence.

Filed Under: media
Companies: dow jones, news corp, pearson