6 ms·

I'm not generally someone that supports illegal acts, but I fully support pirating/copying of textbooks. The fact that textbook publishing companies have a vir

by kjackson2012 14y ago

I'm not generally someone that supports illegal acts, but I fully support pirating/copying of textbooks. The fact that textbook publishing companies have a virtual monopoly and then do other things like coerce professors to continuously force students to use yearly new editions of textbooks makes me believe that the only solution is to pirate their material and starve them of money. Sorry that some good textbook authors are affected by this, but frankly, there is a bigger issue here, and collateral damage is to be expected. The only solution is to charge fair prices, and until that point is reached, I believe students should pirate textbooks to their hearts content.

maeon3 14y ago
So your solution is for them to charge fair prices? While we are fixing prices, I suggest we also fix the prices of DeBeers diamonds to appropriate market value. Then why stop there? Lets have the government set the prices of all overpriced commodities, including outrageous salaries. Someone's already beat you to this idea though, it's called communism.
- kjackson2012 14y ago
  There is no "market" for textbooks. Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it. If a class could somehow allow for different textbooks would allow students to pay for cheaper textbooks and create price competition. But it's hard to do in practice if not impossible. I didn't say they should mandate a fixed price. I said the book publishers should charge a fair price, one that decreases the amount of pirating because it's low enough so that it's not worth it for students to pirate. That's up to them. Until they do, I fully support pirating of textbooks.
  - jamesjguthrie 14y ago
    I also fully agree with pirating textbooks. I'm still at university and require books every now and then. Just the other night I needed access to a book that hasn't been published as an e-book and was $105/£65 if I even had enough time to get it from Amazon. So I downloaded it from a popular torrent site.
  - csomar 14y ago
    Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it. No one put a gun on your head to go to that college. You took this decision and then you must be responsible for the costs of tuition, housing, books... Inform yourself well of the college and professors before enrolling too.
- cmelbye 14y ago
  But he never mentioned government intervention. He suggested that students vote with their wallets, and since they can't decide to purchase another textbook (as one would do in a typical market, which the textbook market isn't), the solution is to pirate.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Good grief, get over yourself. There are not communists lurking under every rock trying to grab your ankles, FFS. The solution to piracy is for the publishers to charge fair prices. In other places such as the UK where textbooks are sensibly priced, there is almost no incentive for piracy and people are far more inclined to buy the text from a bookstore than used.
- obstacle1 14y ago
  >it's called communism No it isn't, but thanks for the 1970s propaganda flashback. If the government is setting prices that private producers are bound by, then that's some form of socialist/capitalist mixed economy. If it were communism, the means of producing textbooks, diamonds, etc. would be publicly owned in the first place. That is, DeBeers wouldn't even exist unless it were some kind of state appendage.
  - maeon3 14y ago
    the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run "Ministry of diamonds" agency. Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism. After they set they diamond prices, then next up on the agenda is to set employee salaries at fair prices.
    - obstacle1 14y ago
      >the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run There is nothing inherent in the definition of corporation saying that corporations are 'more corporatey' when left unrestricted by an external legal system. In fact the only way a corporation (a legal entity) can exist is within a legal framework. That is, corporations can't exist without being regulated into existence. >Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism No, if anything it would be shifting the socialism/capitalism balance towards the former. Regulating a market price isn't making a claim on ownership of the means of production, and so has nothing to do with communism. The US government sets price floors on almost every crop produced in the country. Nobody claims this to be communism or a step towards communism, because it isn't. Price guarantees are a transfer of wealth from non farm-owning taxpayers to farm owners, which is an economic policy rooted in socialism. Price-setting for textbooks or diamonds would also be a policy rooted in socialism. If your argument is that any socialist policy inevitably leads to communism, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you really think the USG has communism in mind as an end goal?
  - nova 14y ago
- bluedanieru 14y ago
  The problem is that the market has been compromised such that fair price discovery isn't happening. Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?
  - maeon3 14y ago
    Textbooks and Diamonds are in the same boat. Free Market supply and demand has been subverted in favour of entities controlling the entire market and setting the prices where the consumers are powerless to punish waste and corruption by selecting an alternative book. A solution would be to make sure that Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books, and put it into Tuition. That way when students see the inflated tuition prices (due to lots of $300 books), they go with the other college that has book prices that are reasonable. It's a nifty switcheroo to charge students tuition, then say "you are responsible for buying the books, and by the way you don't have a choice in the books."
dakimov 14y ago
Maybe the problem is not copyrighting itself, but that the US education system is entirely a rip-off? The copyrighted books not touched by the educational hoax are pretty cheap.
- watty 14y ago
  I'm not sure I see the correlation between copyright and the value of US education system. Can you clarify?
  - niggler 14y ago
    The bubble in college textbook prices is related to the bubble in tuition costs etc, which are both driven by the easy student loans.
  - dakimov 14y ago
    Individually for a student it is pretty justified to use pirated educational books, because the students are clearly being ripped off. But just turning this into another anti-copyright campaign is not the right thing to do.
pdeuchler 14y ago
If there was some way writers could license out their work to multiple publishers that could create competition. Alas, as far as I know, a publisher won't touch a textbook without exclusivity.
- betterunix 14y ago
  Why not cut out the publishers entirely? Have university professors write textbooks, and have university libraries archive and distribute those textbooks electronically. We live in an age of cheap eink screens and cheap printing -- so what purpose do textbook publishers serve these days?
  - capnrefsmmat 14y ago
    University professors don't have the time or skills to create diagrams, locate pictures, handle formatting and typesetting issues, write hundreds of homework problems and solutions, proofread, copyedit, and all the other things that go into producing good textbooks.
    - crymer11 14y ago
      My wife and I both have been in multiple courses where either the professor or another at the university wrote the text book. Some weren't so great, but more than a few were outstanding.
    - thundara 14y ago
      That's what grad students are for.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "University professors don't have the time" Really? I know professors who wrote textbooks in their spare time. Universities could give professors a paid year off (no teaching responsibilities) to work on textbooks. Time is a non-issue here. "...or skills to create diagrams..." Professors, who spend their time writing research papers that are usually filled with diagrams, don't have the skills to do so? That's an interesting assertion. There are plenty of software tools available for creating diagrams. "handle formatting and typesetting issues" Hm, I think there is a tool for that one too: LaTeX. What, it's too much to expect a professor to know how to use LaTeX? Well, there are several other tools that could be used. These problems were more or less solved decades ago. Professors routinely format and typeset their articles; formatting a book is not substantially different. "write hundreds of homework problems" I know professors who do this: they write homework and test problems for their courses. Really, I think you underestimate what an experienced professor could do in a year. Even if what you were saying was true, it would not be hard to solve: universities could hire experts on formatting and publishing to work in their libraries and assist professors. It is also not necessarily the case that every professor would have to write whole books; if books were being shared by universities via their libraries, professors could make corrections and improvements to books as needed, with the changes being propagated in a manner similar to patches in open source projects. We have all the technology that is needed for this, we only need to put in the effort to organize such a system (but I won't hold my breath).
goostavos 14y ago
My elective courses are chosen almost entirely by which books I can pirate. At the beginning of the semester, I fire up uTorrent, and start browsing around. If I can find the text book a course uses, then BAM, I'm taking that course. It's the only thing I pirate these days, and I know its wrong, but I would be lying if I said it didn't feel like victory. A course requiring 4 books, and using only 1/10th of each one is beyond frustrating.
csomar 14y ago
Textbook publishing companies are legal. They might be unethical (or that's your opinion), but they are operate legally. Piracy is illegal. You are complaining about an unethical company and solving the problem by doing an illegal action. Isn't this selfish?
- freework 14y ago
  Slavery at one point was unethical yet legal. Do you consider the people who ran the underground railroad selfish?
- betterunix 14y ago
  "You are complaining about an unethical company and solving the problem by doing an illegal action. Isn't this selfish?" No, it is called "civil disobedience" and it is one of the few effective nonviolent ways to promote change. Further, the law is completely out of alignment is this regard; it is in no way promoting the progress of science or useful arts, nor is it helping to ensure that a needed industry remain solvent. We do not need the textbook publishing industry, because we have a much faster, cheaper, and effective way to distribute textbooks: the Internet. If the law continues to protect these unethical and laughably anachronistic businesses, then the law itself is wrong.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    Civil disobedience is a public protest and has been about being willing to go to jail in protest of unjust laws. It is critical that the authorities are aware that you break the laws and you are available to be arrested. People then become outraged at the injustice of your imprisonment, or so you hope. Sitting at home downloading stuff and then posting about it using an anonymous handle is not civil disobedience.

maeon3 14y ago

So your solution is for them to charge fair prices? While we are fixing prices, I suggest we also fix the prices of DeBeers diamonds to appropriate market value. Then why stop there? Lets have the government set the prices of all overpriced commodities, including outrageous salaries. Someone's already beat you to this idea though, it's called communism.

kjackson2012 14y ago
There is no "market" for textbooks. Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it. If a class could somehow allow for different textbooks would allow students to pay for cheaper textbooks and create price competition. But it's hard to do in practice if not impossible. I didn't say they should mandate a fixed price. I said the book publishers should charge a fair price, one that decreases the amount of pirating because it's low enough so that it's not worth it for students to pirate. That's up to them. Until they do, I fully support pirating of textbooks.
- jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  I also fully agree with pirating textbooks. I'm still at university and require books every now and then. Just the other night I needed access to a book that hasn't been published as an e-book and was $105/£65 if I even had enough time to get it from Amazon. So I downloaded it from a popular torrent site.
- csomar 14y ago
  Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it. No one put a gun on your head to go to that college. You took this decision and then you must be responsible for the costs of tuition, housing, books... Inform yourself well of the college and professors before enrolling too.
cmelbye 14y ago
But he never mentioned government intervention. He suggested that students vote with their wallets, and since they can't decide to purchase another textbook (as one would do in a typical market, which the textbook market isn't), the solution is to pirate.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Good grief, get over yourself. There are not communists lurking under every rock trying to grab your ankles, FFS. The solution to piracy is for the publishers to charge fair prices. In other places such as the UK where textbooks are sensibly priced, there is almost no incentive for piracy and people are far more inclined to buy the text from a bookstore than used.
obstacle1 14y ago
>it's called communism No it isn't, but thanks for the 1970s propaganda flashback. If the government is setting prices that private producers are bound by, then that's some form of socialist/capitalist mixed economy. If it were communism, the means of producing textbooks, diamonds, etc. would be publicly owned in the first place. That is, DeBeers wouldn't even exist unless it were some kind of state appendage.
- maeon3 14y ago
  the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run "Ministry of diamonds" agency. Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism. After they set they diamond prices, then next up on the agenda is to set employee salaries at fair prices.
  - obstacle1 14y ago
    >the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run There is nothing inherent in the definition of corporation saying that corporations are 'more corporatey' when left unrestricted by an external legal system. In fact the only way a corporation (a legal entity) can exist is within a legal framework. That is, corporations can't exist without being regulated into existence. >Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism No, if anything it would be shifting the socialism/capitalism balance towards the former. Regulating a market price isn't making a claim on ownership of the means of production, and so has nothing to do with communism. The US government sets price floors on almost every crop produced in the country. Nobody claims this to be communism or a step towards communism, because it isn't. Price guarantees are a transfer of wealth from non farm-owning taxpayers to farm owners, which is an economic policy rooted in socialism. Price-setting for textbooks or diamonds would also be a policy rooted in socialism. If your argument is that any socialist policy inevitably leads to communism, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you really think the USG has communism in mind as an end goal?
- nova 14y ago
bluedanieru 14y ago
The problem is that the market has been compromised such that fair price discovery isn't happening. Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?
- maeon3 14y ago
  Textbooks and Diamonds are in the same boat. Free Market supply and demand has been subverted in favour of entities controlling the entire market and setting the prices where the consumers are powerless to punish waste and corruption by selecting an alternative book. A solution would be to make sure that Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books, and put it into Tuition. That way when students see the inflated tuition prices (due to lots of $300 books), they go with the other college that has book prices that are reasonable. It's a nifty switcheroo to charge students tuition, then say "you are responsible for buying the books, and by the way you don't have a choice in the books."

dakimov 14y ago

Maybe the problem is not copyrighting itself, but that the US education system is entirely a rip-off? The copyrighted books not touched by the educational hoax are pretty cheap.

watty 14y ago
I'm not sure I see the correlation between copyright and the value of US education system. Can you clarify?
- niggler 14y ago
  The bubble in college textbook prices is related to the bubble in tuition costs etc, which are both driven by the easy student loans.
- dakimov 14y ago
  Individually for a student it is pretty justified to use pirated educational books, because the students are clearly being ripped off. But just turning this into another anti-copyright campaign is not the right thing to do.

pdeuchler 14y ago

If there was some way writers could license out their work to multiple publishers that could create competition. Alas, as far as I know, a publisher won't touch a textbook without exclusivity.

betterunix 14y ago
Why not cut out the publishers entirely? Have university professors write textbooks, and have university libraries archive and distribute those textbooks electronically. We live in an age of cheap eink screens and cheap printing -- so what purpose do textbook publishers serve these days?
- capnrefsmmat 14y ago
  University professors don't have the time or skills to create diagrams, locate pictures, handle formatting and typesetting issues, write hundreds of homework problems and solutions, proofread, copyedit, and all the other things that go into producing good textbooks.
  - crymer11 14y ago
    My wife and I both have been in multiple courses where either the professor or another at the university wrote the text book. Some weren't so great, but more than a few were outstanding.
  - thundara 14y ago
    That's what grad students are for.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "University professors don't have the time" Really? I know professors who wrote textbooks in their spare time. Universities could give professors a paid year off (no teaching responsibilities) to work on textbooks. Time is a non-issue here. "...or skills to create diagrams..." Professors, who spend their time writing research papers that are usually filled with diagrams, don't have the skills to do so? That's an interesting assertion. There are plenty of software tools available for creating diagrams. "handle formatting and typesetting issues" Hm, I think there is a tool for that one too: LaTeX. What, it's too much to expect a professor to know how to use LaTeX? Well, there are several other tools that could be used. These problems were more or less solved decades ago. Professors routinely format and typeset their articles; formatting a book is not substantially different. "write hundreds of homework problems" I know professors who do this: they write homework and test problems for their courses. Really, I think you underestimate what an experienced professor could do in a year. Even if what you were saying was true, it would not be hard to solve: universities could hire experts on formatting and publishing to work in their libraries and assist professors. It is also not necessarily the case that every professor would have to write whole books; if books were being shared by universities via their libraries, professors could make corrections and improvements to books as needed, with the changes being propagated in a manner similar to patches in open source projects. We have all the technology that is needed for this, we only need to put in the effort to organize such a system (but I won't hold my breath).

goostavos 14y ago

My elective courses are chosen almost entirely by which books I can pirate. At the beginning of the semester, I fire up uTorrent, and start browsing around. If I can find the text book a course uses, then BAM, I'm taking that course. It's the only thing I pirate these days, and I know its wrong, but I would be lying if I said it didn't feel like victory. A course requiring 4 books, and using only 1/10th of each one is beyond frustrating.

csomar 14y ago

Textbook publishing companies are legal. They might be unethical (or that's your opinion), but they are operate legally. Piracy is illegal. You are complaining about an unethical company and solving the problem by doing an illegal action. Isn't this selfish?

freework 14y ago
Slavery at one point was unethical yet legal. Do you consider the people who ran the underground railroad selfish?
betterunix 14y ago
"You are complaining about an unethical company and solving the problem by doing an illegal action. Isn't this selfish?" No, it is called "civil disobedience" and it is one of the few effective nonviolent ways to promote change. Further, the law is completely out of alignment is this regard; it is in no way promoting the progress of science or useful arts, nor is it helping to ensure that a needed industry remain solvent. We do not need the textbook publishing industry, because we have a much faster, cheaper, and effective way to distribute textbooks: the Internet. If the law continues to protect these unethical and laughably anachronistic businesses, then the law itself is wrong.
- droithomme 14y ago
  Civil disobedience is a public protest and has been about being willing to go to jail in protest of unjust laws. It is critical that the authorities are aware that you break the laws and you are available to be arrested. People then become outraged at the injustice of your imprisonment, or so you hope. Sitting at home downloading stuff and then posting about it using an anonymous handle is not civil disobedience.