CORRECTION APPENDED

Last Thursday, the Coop called the cops on three undergraduates who were busily recording ISBNs, or book serial numbers, for Crimsonreading.com, a student-run Web site that allows visitors to compare textbook prices between the pricey Coop and its cheaper, web-based competitors like Amazon.com. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW] The Coop huffed that the ISBNs were their intellectual property since it went through the effort of soliciting and collecting book lists from professors, and that it doesn’t allow extended note taking by students. Dry-eyed, the two Cambridge police officers left the students untouched, and the students continued their allegedly illicit note taking for two and a half hours.

But before we wax indignant over this bookstore bully, we wish to highlight the real problem: lazy faculty. Professors should burn the extra calories it takes to type these ISBNs on their syllabi and post them online early, so students can find their textbooks at more affordable venues. With relatively little effort, the faculty would be doing a major service for its students, especially financially strapped students who work hard to conserve their cash. It also would force the Coop, which currently has a virtual stranglehold over the Harvard textbook market, to lower its prices to compete with other bookstores soaking up the new business.

The College administration, meanwhile, has decided to wash their hands of the matter. Last April, the Undergraduate Council proposed a Harvard College Book Information System to the Committee on Undergraduate Education, which promptly shut it down. According to former Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, speaking to The Crimson last spring, “I didn’t think that I could financially support an effort that was in some ways in opposition to the Harvard Coop.” This near-fetishistic protectionism, which the new College administration apparently still espouses, is befuddling to say the least. What has Harvard come to that the College administration has abdicated its responsibility to students in favor of a business?

But even with the apparent apathy of the Faculty and the inexplicable cowardice of the College administration, we also find fault with the Coop. We understand that the Coop is a business—and a necessary one at that. There will always be students who need their books immediately, and the Coop should be able to charge extra for providing that convenience. The Coop, however, does not own ISBNs—as Jonathan L. Zittrain, the director of the Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has said. ISBNs are facts, and the unique combinations of ISBNs on reading lists are intellectual property—but of professors. While the Faculty can assert intellectual property rights over reading lists, the Coop cannot. Moreover, the Coop, as a cooperative, exists to serve the student community (everyone with a Coop card technically owns part of the cooperative), and jealously guarding ISBNs seems contrary to its shareholders’ interests. Students should be able to take down ISBNs freely without Coop employees nervously pacing around them.

CORRECTION: Last Monday’s editorial "Uncooperative" referred to CrimsonReading.com as a student-run textbook comparison Web site. In fact, the Web site is called CrimsonReading.org. The Crimson regrets the error.