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Comment by rosetremiere | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for the non-uniqueness of ISBN? Google didn't provide anything tangible and I'd be very interested in a reputable place confirming your claim.

Actually, as far as I see [0] ISBN have to be unique. It seems like this "South End Press" is more of a case of a publisher going rogue than anything els.

[0] https://www.isbn-international.org/content/isbn-assignment (see the '“Out of print” editions' bullet)

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Stephanie Marlowe's reply to

https://www.quora.com/Is-every-book-has-a-unique-isbn-If-yes...

points out the non-uniqueness of ISBNs. I used to work in the IT department of a major university library and it was a problem that the librarians were aware of.

It takes exactly one "rouge" publisher to make a problem. (Funny I used to know the people at South End Press)

Fair enough, but my issue with your original comment is that it implied that _by design_, ISBN does not uniquely identify books, which is wrong, as far as I can tell. In any case, the issue of reuse of ISBN has practical consequences, so that the original intent might not be so important in the end.

Do you have any idea how many cases there are of reuse? Is it actually common?

rogue or communist publisher?

The ISBN might be unique, but that doesn't mean the barcode on the cover is.[0]

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/style/dan-brown-advice-bo...

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