I’ve had professors share PDFs of copyrighted textbooks with the class. I doubt this was legally valid in any way. I personally love to buy textbooks because I

I’ve had professors share PDFs of copyrighted textbooks with the class. I doubt this was legally valid in any way. I personally love to buy textbooks because I think a physical book is easier to retain. Printing and binding a PDF at Fedex is usually a similar cost, and I’d rather have the nice physical copy decorate my bookshelf, like a hard-won trophy. I would make the argument that textbooks should cost more than novels because I can read a novel at a page per minute or two, but a textbook is probably more like a page per 30-60 (on average). Then again, many Dover books cost around the same price as novels. That being said, you might need to consult 3 or 4 different textbooks for a course, and on a student’s budget, this is absurd. Anybody that doesn’t have parents in the upper middle class and beyond will suffer. Science is an engine of social mobility for the intellectually gifted and nobody should feel bad for pirating textbooks. I think, like pirating journal articles, the only people that disagree with you are publishing companies.