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posted by CoolHand on Monday March 13 2017, @11:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the information-wants-to-be-free dept.

Back in September last year, Mike wrote about the remarkable court ruling in India that copyright is not inevitable, divine or a natural right. As we have been reporting since 2013, the case in question was brought by three big Western publishers against Delhi University and a photocopy shop over "course packs" -- bound collections of photocopied extracts from books and journals that are sold more cheaply than the sources. Although the High Court of Delhi ruled that photocopying textbooks in this way is fair use, that was not necessarily the end of the story: the publishers might have appealed to India's Supreme Court. But as the Spicy IP site reports, they didn't:

In a stunning development, OUP, CUP and Taylor & Francis just withdrew their copyright law suit filed against Delhi University (and its photocopier, Rameshwari) 5 years ago! They indicated this to the Delhi high court in a short and succinct filing made this morning.

This withdrawal brings to an end one of the most hotly contested IP battles ever, pitting as it did multinational publishers against academics and students. The law suit was filed as far back as 2012 and it dragged on for 5 long years!

[...] That's an important point. So often it seems that copyright only ever gets longer and stronger, with the public always on the losing side. The latest news from India shows that very occasionally, it's the public that wins.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170309/07340536878/photocopying-textbooks-is-fair-use-india-western-publishers-withdraw-copyright-suit-against-delhi-university.shtml


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by patrick on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:35AM (1 child)

    by patrick (3990) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:35AM (#478749)

    nothing has changed in a good 50-100 years ... same physics, same biology, same chemistry, same world studies, etc etc etc.

    The following timelines seem to disagree.

    Timeline of fundamental physics discoveries [wikipedia.org]

    Timeline of biology and organic chemistry [wikipedia.org]

    Timeline of chemistry [wikipedia.org]

    20th-century events [wikipedia.org]

    I support free textbooks, but a textbook from 1917 wouldn't be my first pick.

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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:53PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:53PM (#478964) Journal

    I completely agree that we've had significant changes in most fields. On the other hand, there are still instances where a textbook (or significant portions of a textbook) from a century ago could still be more than adequate. Most math classes except for really advanced math majors, for example. A lot of freshman physics (as VLM said in another post). Chemistry textbooks would need some editing, but a lot of the basic stuff about reactions, basic calculations, etc. covered in a typical first-semester college course is still there. Etc.

    I'm frankly surprised there isn't more of an industry to lightly edit public domain textbooks from these fields and republish them for cheap. In some classes, you could just add in a few sections to cover more standard curricula for today and excise the really out-of-date stuff. And for the amount of work it would take to put together, you could probably sell the book for 1/5th the cost of a modern textbook (maybe less; a lot of it will probably just be printing costs).

    If I were teaching freshman calculus or mechanics or something, I'd definitely consider drawing significantly on a public domain textbook from a century ago, either lightly edited and/or supplemented by my own materials where necessary.