It seems, from the example of the RIAA, that copyright enforcement can be the last vestiges of a dying business model. Gripping to government created monopoly has postponed the demise of record labels that is becoming evident from the recent developments concerning Nine Inch Nails and Madonna.

Two recent developments show that the internet’s effects on the music industry is being mirrored in the textbook business. At the beginning of this school year, the Harvard Coop bookstore was reportedly kicking out students who were writing down book prices for online comparison shopping. The management claimed copyright over the prices, but public outcry, led by Harvard’s own, seems to have mitigated the issue. After all, one can’t copyright facts.

More recently, the Follett Higher Education Group has sued Ugenie. Follett, purveyor of textbooks to many college students (including me), claims that Ugenie has violated both the Terms of Service and the DMCA by “scrapping” prices from the efollett.com site and providing comparison price shopping services. Wired’s Threat Level blog details the charges here. And a useful analysis of the intellectual property claim is here.

While the merits of the case are up for debate, I think it is clear that the consumer (students) are set to lose if Follett prevails. Both the Coop and Follett are attempting to use government created monopoly to limit competition and as anyone who has taken Econ 101 can tell you, a lack of competition means higher prices - in this case, for the textbooks which are already so expensive.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.