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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] OCLC turns evil (was ISO turns evil?)
 In today's New York Times: ---------------------------------------- Where Did Dewey File Those Law Books? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/nyregion/23DEWE.html By MICHAEL LUO Who knew that someone owned the Dewey Decimal System? Apparently not the owners of the Library Hotel, nestled in the shadow of the New York Public Library. Now the boutique hotel, which numbers its guest rooms and stocks them with books according to Melvil Dewey's century-old library classification system, is being sued for using it. "The Dewey Decimal System is a product, a trademark, a brand name," said Joseph R. Dreitler, a lawyer for the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit library cooperative that filed the suit last week in Federal District Court in Ohio. "The idea here isn't to put the Library Hotel out of business. The idea is to protect Dewey and the Dewey Decimal System trademark." The hotel opened three years ago at Madison Avenue and 41st Street. From its imitation card catalog in the lobby to its stately second-floor reading room, it is designed as a siren for book lovers. Each floor is devoted to one of the 10 main categories of knowledge in the Dewey system: Social Sciences, Languages, Math and Science, Technology, the Arts, Literature, History and Geography, General Knowledge, Philosophy and Religion. Hotel guests can request a specific floor or themed room, furnished with the corresponding books. History buffs might consider the ninth floor, with Biography (900.006) or Asian History (900.004). A technology aficionado might give Computers (600.005) a try. The most popular rooms, by far? Erotic Literature (800.001) and Love (1100.006). Room and suite prices on the hotel's Web site range from $295 to $770 per night. Hotel officials said yesterday that the owner, Henry Kallan, could not be reached in Prague, where he is opening a new music-themed hotel, the Aria. But the hotel's general manager, Craig Spitzer, issued a written statement saying that the Dewey Decimal theme was Mr. Kallan's "original idea," based on its proximity to the public library. "We are not a library lending books, but rather we have created a unique hotel experience for book lovers to enjoy," Mr. Spitzer said. "We do not believe that our guests or other consumers are confused into thinking the Library Hotel's hospitality services and the O.C.L.C.'s information services come from the same source." The Online Computer Library Center is seeking damages of three times the profits the hotel has made since it opened. Dewey, a librarian, invented the Dewey Decimal Classification in 1874 and devoted his life to spreading it. Over time, it became the most widely employed cataloging system in the world, used today in 95 percent of public libraries in the United States.... --------------------------------------------------- What's next? A charge for using the Dublin Core vocabulary? I guess it's time to stop using anything that isn't explicitly placed in the public domain or licensed openly, since even the institutions that are supposed to be encouraging people to use technology are getting far too interested in making a buck. (Network Solutions seems to be the leader of the pack in this category, but the virus is spreading.) This trademark case is pathetic. Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com http://monasticxml.org 
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