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Hotel Being Sued for Using the Dewey Decimal System
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Sep 21, 2003 10:38 AM
from the who-knew dept.
from the who-knew dept.
cbull writes "Did you know the Dewey Decimal System isn't in the public domain? The rights are owned by the Online Computer Library Center. They are suing the Library Hotel in New York for trademark infringement. In addition, according to the article, libraries pay at least $500/year to use the system."
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Hotel Being Sued for Using the Dewey Decimal System
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This could be good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could be good (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday April 04 2003, @12:49AM)
I know that's the case here in Taiwan. I was shocked to find major research universities using DDC and then when I began working with a publisher I learned that it had a lot to do with copyright and the LOC. In fact, I taught classes on using the LOC at one point for students preparing to go overseas.
But personally I find the DDC obnoxious and far more of an obstacle to research than a helpful classification system.
Re:This could be good (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday April 04 2003, @12:49AM)
Things really have changed with the IP nazis on everybody's ass these days, but once upon a time there was a large market in reprinting expensive foreign titles and even making custom bound compilations. See the problem? Where are you going to file that?
Re:This could be good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an acceptable solution when you're searching on paper or your search sapce isn't that large, but today we have computers and far more data.
For example, "Algorithms in C" is a classic text a lot of people here probably own.
But does it belong under "math", "computer science", or "computer languages -> C"? (Dewey seperates Computing out into a seperate category, rather than placing it under math).
The answer, of course, is all three.
The ideal system would be a free-text search of all the books in the catalogue. But until we can do that, keywords and searchable abstracts are more useful than categories. Just put the damn books on the shelf in order of author.
Re:This could be good (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday March 28 2005, @11:39AM)
Sometimes, libraries do place faux books on the shelf with instructions to the browser to "also consult this CDROM" but stacks loaded with these faux books would not be particularly easy to browse.
My ideal library would let browsers borrow hand held electronic catalogues-- so that flashes of insight wouldn't need to be followed by a long trek back to the catalogs in the lobby.
Re:This could be good (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 16 2006, @10:03PM)
You make a very good point that a hierarchical system isn't suitable for cataloging. I have the same problem with my more than 6000 (all legally acquired) MP3s: Artists span Genres, Albums contain works by more than one Composer, Artists may appear in more than one Group/Band/Orchestra, etc.
But free-text search isn't a great solution; we've all seen that with Google: I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
In these cases, an abstract is more useful than a full-text search.
Re:This could be good (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 06 2007, @01:13AM)
You can still keep the old systems.
And you can extend it.
Re:This could be good (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no, no.
What is needed is that PLUS exactly what you hinted at: faceted classification.
Books can be arranged on the shelves by author or FILO or whatever, but they should be, in the age of computers, indexed by multiple heirarchical facets.
Keywords and free-text searches are far too unreliable, even in the age of Google. If you're doing serious research, you can't rely on the first Google hit, you need to try several different methods. In fact, Google's methodology, ranking by weighted hyperlink popularity, wouldn't apply to books.
What you need are a combination of faceted classification (like the subject entries in the cataloging software most libraries use) and free-text as well as abstract searching. Quite frankly, humans and the software they write are too stupid to classify everything well enough to use one system or another exclusively.
Re:This could be good (Score:4, Informative)
I worked as a reference assistant at a large urban public library for 5+ years, and in my experience, less than half of the people who came in were doing research via the catalog. Most of them were simply browsing by subject. 99% of the time, it was faster and easier to simply point them to the spot on the shelves where a particular subject number was.
I mean, we were five floors covering an entire city block... would you really want to have to walk from one extreme of the building to grab Linux Apache Web Server Administration by Charles Aulds to the other end to get Matt Welsh's Running Linux? In my library, I could just point to to a single shelf with the 005's.
Shelving by author is fine, barely, for fiction, where a lot people tend to read every book by a particular author. Even then, a lot of large libraries tend to split stuff up by genre much like your local bookstore. But for nonfiction, organizing by subject for browsing and casual research is the only way to go.
As for Dewey vs. LC, well, that's up there with vi and Emacs. LC works well for academic libraries where there's a hell of a lot more in-depth research going on, while Dewey works best for public libraries. I find Dewey more intuitive, but that's probably because I know it best. In research institutions, where most patrons have the time to spend a half hour in front of a catalog session, LC seems to fit the bill. YMMV, natch.
Re:This could be good (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean in this day and age surely some sort of tree structure would be better (and be easier to manipulate by machines). Each book has n number of attributes where n is bigger than 0. You can go on adding nodes of type attribute until the book is described uniqely. Or dammit - just index them by the ISBN and chuck in a whole bunch of keywords to search by..
In other news, the estate of one Pythagoras is suing everyone for making the square of the hypotenuse on their triangles equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides - the thieving swines! Pop-Idol on BBC2 next, after the weather.
Fees for this? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday November 26 2002, @07:28PM)
Oh, wait...
340 (Score:4, Funny)
Out of business (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://riddoch.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday March 01 2003, @10:55AM)
Re:Out of business (Score:5, Informative)
(http://bonkoif.com/)
The lawsuit said the center sent three letters to Kallan from October 2000 to October 2002, asking for acknowledgment of Online's ownership of the Dewey trademarks, but the hotel owner didn't respond.
While I agree the hotel should pay the back licensing fees, I think this lawsuit is a little excessive. But given that they said letters were sent, it's probably just to get the hotel's attention. The OCLC even says at the bottom of the article that they're looking to settle, and they don't want the hotel to go out of business. They just want a licensing agreement.
I've been to the Library Hotel. It's a really nice place. Yes, the books play an integral part in the ambiance of the hotel. But the use of the Dewey Decimal System is hardly the biggest thing they've got going for them, or the most important. They could easily drop the DDC classifications of the floors and rooms and the hotel would lose nothing by it.
-Todd
Re:Out of business (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.meowing.net/)
School library (Score:5, Informative)
(http://nullref.se/)
I really doubt they have a license. And there's no way to find out until tuesday... I can't wait!
Oh, and here's a nice intro on DDC:
http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/int
(Why is there a space between the 'r' and 'o'?)
Re:A better history (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.clanmacgaming.com/)
Connections (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"A person who came to their Web site and looked at the way (the hotel) is promoted and marketed would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system."
Don't you think that a person browsing the website might just think "Oh, they're a theme hotel"?
On the other hand, if libraries have to license it, then I guess that's how it works.
Trademarked? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trademarked? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.kckd.org/)
What have (Score:4, Funny)
hah (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.kickinthehead.org/)
"Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System????"
CONAN THE LIBRARIAN!
LoC Classification (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents would make a sort of sense, but Dewy Decimal dates back to 1873, so it can't be a patent. Copyright doesn't seem to apply since there isn't obviously a "work" being copied.
What gives? Is it just a matter of the trademark?
How is this even possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, it seems that the Online Compyter Library Center does do quite a bit of work to maintain the system, which should entitle them to some rights - but it sure seems that if some guy published something anonymously in 1876, he probably intended it to be in the public domain. Seems to me, if the hotel was based on the original system, and not the one improved by subsequent owners, he should be ok - especially if they referred to it as the "Melvil Dewey System" or something.
I had no idea it was owned - how come they aren't going after the elementary schools that teach the system? Or is that included in their library's license? And how come we're teaching a proprietary, trademarked system? Next thing you know, they'll be teaching our kids Windows!!!
Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, right. If I was particularly jetlagged, drunk or whatever, I might pop up to the counter and ask to speak to Melvil Dewey. But I'm sure I'm not alone in that I never even considered that a numeric system invented in the next-to-previous century would still be owned today, much less that anyone who used it would be representative of that owner.
It's lucky that I'm ambivalent about my primary school; when I was there, I organised the books according to the Dewey system. If I were at all bitter, I'd rat them out, and not just becuase the 098 section was completely empty.
Oh, and here's something funny. In my research for this comment, I typed 'dewey 098' into google to see if it still meant what I thought it did.
098 is for forbidden books. Now that you know that google for 'dewey 098' while you're feeling lucky.
Created in 1873? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://doyoulovepuppiesido.blogspot.com/)
Anything from before the 1920s should be in the public domain, even if nothing after that will ever go into the public domain. I mean, was there indeed some perpetual copyright clause slipped into some bill or another? How could anybody otherwise still own the rights to this?
How is this NOT public domain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:whichever it is, it should have expired (Score:5, Informative)
It's trademarked, and there is a problem because they are using the Dewey Decimal System name in their advertising [citysearch.com] without permission.
library hotel (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.fivefeetdeep.com/)
Why not use the LC system? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.atypical.net/)
How did they pick the damages??? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the CNN [cnn.com] story
"The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus seeks triple the hotel's profits since its opening or triple the organization's damages, whichever is greater, from the hotel's owner."
"Dreitler said Saturday he and his client do not yet know the size of the hotel's profits. The center, based in Dublin, is willing to settle with the hotel's owners, he said."
If this does not scream frivolous lawsuit (or lottery ticket lawsuit) then I don't know what does. I thought if you were suing someone for "damages" that you had pick an amount, not just claim "triple whatever is going to get me the most money".
This is more proof that the legal system in the US is severely broken and abused.
Oh good grief (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.solemndragon.org/ | Last Journal: Monday April 16 2007, @10:17AM)
oke. Back to subject. This leads me to the next question. How much sense does it make to make libraries pay for one more thing? And will the next step be to raise this license fee? Most libraries are struggling along as it is, so i hope not. There isn't enough storage and there isn't enough funding, and it drives me crazy to see book sales held sometimes, in those cases where it's just because there's no way to maintain the full shelves.
Let me rephrase this. Most libraries are non-profit entities. Five bucks a year isn't a lot of money, but it's money being charged for a standard system that would take a lot of time and effort to shift away from. Maybe derivative works should be allowed; if a hotel is using it for anything other than books, maybe it should be hailed as an innovative way to make people more aware of the system itself. But i'm willing to accept that the system 'owners' may have the legal right to collect... it's the obsessive nature of this particular instance that bothers me. *shrug* i could be way off-base.
So... the most important point here, i think, is: What's a better way? And how can we make it free to libraries and other non-profits?
Re:Oh good grief (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.meowing.net/)
It's sort of a hidden fee. The DDC book costs about $400, new edition every 3 years or so.
Note though, that the hotel isn't being sued for using the classification system, but for infringing on the Dewey trademark for commercial purposes.
This is absurd. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.cs.utah.edu/~andersbr/)
It would only make sense that they should have to prove that every customer who stayed there wouldn't have were it not for their use of the Dewey Decimal system.
It sounds like this non-profit actually serves a useful purpose, but I really hope that if this goes to court, their damages get capped at around $4500 (triple the money the hotel saved by not buying a license).
It's a Trademark infringement case. (Score:4, Informative)
The suit is for trademark infringement, not copyright or patent infringement.
In the U.S. Trademark rights can be held indefinitely by the registrant, or it's successors in interest as in this case, with timely filing of required paperwork and paying of appropriate fees.
What I find amusing is that the designer's of the hotel clearly did not do their homework. The research branch of the New York Public Library doesn't even use the Dewey system. It uses the Library of Congress categories. Here's the NYPL's online catalog. [nypl.org] I guess the designer's went into the Library to look at the architecture, but didn't actually bother to call for a book, or even check the catalog. Had they, they wouldn't be in this pickle.
LOC? (Score:3, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 12, @12:30PM)
Case summary (Score:4, Informative)
(http://future.wikicities.com/)
Here is what I found. The hotel uses something which very much resembles the original DDC classification, which is in public domain. As the site states, "Each of the ten guestroom floors of the Library is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. Each of the sixty exquisitely appointed accommodations have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of floor [libraryhotel.com] it belongs to.".
It's simply fucking insane that DDC is suing the hotel for that. I mean, WTF?! They claim trademark infridgement? They use the basic classification which is probably the same as original one, created 130 years ago and is now in public domain. If they use it, they are completely within their rights to call it "Dewey Decimal System" because that's what it is. And it's not like the hotel is in any competition with DDC. Nor any customers will be confused that the hotel is somehow affiliated with DDC. Stupid lawsuit and the whole concept of IP should be trashed. It's long overdue.