Case could shape future of textbook publishing

Brian Balfour (left) and Aaron White helped found Boundless Learning, a start-up that offers “open-source’’ textbooks.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

In Boston, it can seem like most of the city’s population has either authored a textbook, assigned one for a course they teach, or purchased one recently.

So that makes a recently filed lawsuit our city’s version of Viacom v. YouTube, or the Department of Justice v. Microsoft, one of those cases that everyone in our tech- and education-oriented town will follow. Three of the largest publishers of textbooks are suing Boundless Learning, a Boston start-up trying to popularize free, Web-based textbooks.

Techies and students may line up on the side of Boundless, which asserts that printed texts are too expensive - and often out of date by the time they hit bookstores. And isn’t it about time the placid textbook industry was shaken up by some disruptive innovation?

But textbook writers and some educators may find themselves sympathizing with the publishers suing Boundless for copyright infringement. They say the digital texts resemble their copyrighted works a bit too closely, which could over time chisel away at the economic rationale for writing and publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed texts.

It’s one of those cases that pits content creators trying to earn a living in the digital age against consumers who would prefer to get everything for free. And in Boundless’ defense of its business, posted on the company’s blog, there are echoes of complaints we heard about the music industry 10 years ago: Textbook publishers operate as an oligopoly, wringing as much profit as they can from students who don’t have many options. (Here, as in the music industry, piracy is another option: Many popular textbooks are illegally scanned and swapped on file-sharing networks.)

Boundless got slapped with the suit while the company was still beta-testing its service, which opened to students last fall. The 13-person company has created online learning guides for three subject areas: biology, psychology, and economics. Each subject area encompasses material from several textbooks, cofounder Ariel Diaz says, but he wouldn’t disclose the exact number of texts covered by the Boundless service.

(The lawsuit mentions three in particular, including popular titles like “Principles of Economics,’’ by Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw. It sells for about $250 new.)

The Boundless content must be viewed in a Web browser. It includes some features that mimic the way you might read a textbook, like highlighting certain passages or making notes in the margin, and some that are novel, like clicking on key terms to see their definitions. The site keeps track of which chapters you’ve read, and it allows you to toggle back and forth between the complete text and a bulleted list of “key concepts’’ about the topic.

How exactly does Boundless create a digital version of a textbook that’s intended to render the physical one unnecessary? It gathers content to match the concepts covered in the assigned textbook from sites like Wikipedia; government sources like the National Institutes of Health website; older books like Gray’s Anatomy that are already in the public domain; and collections of noncopyrighted educational content. The content is structured so it covers the same concepts in the same order as the original text, down to matching the page numbers.

So far, everything on the Boundless site is free. There’s no advertising, either. “Right now, we’re focused on the core learning experience,’’ says Diaz. Adding paid features or services won’t happen for at least another year, he says.

The company has raised almost $10 million in venture capital - some of which will now go to attorney’s fees. Diaz says that receiving the lawsuit was the first interaction the company had with the three big publishers. “It was a surprising first level of contact,’’ he says.

The suit, filed last month by Pearson, Cengage Learning, and MacMillan Higher Education asserts that without being a straight-out photocopy Xerox, Boundless’s digital versions copy “the distinctive selection, arrangement, and presentation’’ of the publishers’ textbooks. The suit contends that Boundless “operates a business built on brazen infringement that whittles away at plaintiffs’ and their authors’ incentive to create and perfect their works, misleads students, and has a corrosive effect on learning.’’ (Cengage and Pearson have significant operations in Boston.)

Three lawyers with whom I spoke all said the case, if it reaches a courtroom, will be nuanced. Paul Sennott, an attorney at Stern Shapiro Weissberg & Garin in Boston, says the publishers will have to prove “that the layouts and general design features of their books constitute copyrightable subject matter, and are thus deserving of protection under the law. This is something that many website operators, faced with copycat websites that similarly mimic the layout, or ‘look and feel,’ of their original sites, have had trouble doing. This is a relatively undeveloped area of copyright law, so there will be a lot of questions to answer in this case.’’

The professors who write textbooks to supplement their income - and share what they know - can’t help but wonder if textbooks may be going the way of Encyclopaedia Britannica. James Alan Fox, a Northeastern criminology professor who has written three texts, all published by Pearson, says he and other scholars would probably find other ways to make extra money, writing other types of books or consulting. “But,’’ he adds, “the question that comes up is if professors don’t write textbooks, who will?’’

The answer to that question could hinge on the outcome of Pearson, Cengage, and MacMillan v. Boundless Learning.

As a writer, I know where my allegiances lie. I’d prefer not to live in a world where creators of original content are considered clueless dinosaurs, while aggregators and repackagers of content - whether the Huffington Post, Instagram, or Boundless - are richly rewarded.