Slashdot Mirror
Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads
jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.
The problem isn't just that they are expensive, but that the publishers are trying to bilk the students. They include CD-ROMs they know are useless as an excuse to charge higher prices and they come out with a new "edition" every year that changes the page numbers and exercise numbers so that students can't rely on used textbooks.
They got too greedy and pushed too far and that is what will actually give people the motivation to push back.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Text book to me seem unfairly maligned for having a hefty price tag. I suppose it depends on your exact experience, but say a book costs around $100 and that students spend around $400-$500 per semester. I know plenty of people who complain about that, and then I see them spending $50 a night "going out" with their friends, or buying dinner with a date for close to $100. A DVD costs around $20 and lasts a few hours. How long would it take to read a text book and learn everything it has to offer? Years in most cases. If you don't think that sounds like fun, why are you at a university studying? If you go to a good school that has you buy good texts, and not 'keep up' every year with whatever new edition of Intro to Calculus it out, you are making an investment.
After having to pay for a new algebra book (75$'s) because, apparently, algebra changed since last year and the teacher insisted I have the new book.
The majority of cost for me to go to a community college here in California is the books, and it is such a scam by the book companies, which also left me wondering "does the teacher get a kick back?"
Why would an algebra teacher insist on the latest book? Because his exercises are there so it makes it easy to correct? Why?
Who cares it's a rip off any way you look at it.
This is one example of information that should be free, or extremely cheap, at least when it comes to types of knowledge (math) that has not changed for centuries.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The big problem here is that the price of textbooks has increased at a far higher rate than inflation. Students are forced to buy whatever textbook their class uses, so the publisher can set whatever price they wish - the students still have to use the books. Essentially, the publishers are granted monopolies on books for specific groups of students.
To combat this, many students buy used books. Many school bookstores offer few or no new textbooks for some classes, because they make a lot of money buying textbooks back and reselling them for more money. Publishers claim this further drives up the price, because they don't get a cut of resales. This may be true, but they've created this situation by pricing new textbooks so much higher than what their market can reasonably afford.
What they are really talking about here with changing the problems is shutting down the used textbook market. If you can't use the book from last semester, the used book becomes nearly worthless.
I've benefited a lot from the GPL, but in the back of my mind I've always considered Richard Stallman as something of a crackpot.. A bit too odd..
But the more I think about it, the more he makes sense. He's talking about software, but imagine if other knowledge was as free as the source code. Imagine how *anyone* could learn and be productive without the barrier of money.
Clearly most subjects don't dramatically change from year to year (intro physics, algebra, calc, history, etc...). Why do professors always want to use the most recent version? Is it only because they know everyone can get a copy? Wouldn't it be easier (and legal) to solve this problem by publishing a page-number alignment table so that ALL old versions could be used in the same class?
When I was in school I found my recall was highly photographic and associative. I assume this is present to different degrees in most people.
When I recalled something in a book I would recall where on the page it was and what was around it. I'd recall how far I had to flip into the book roughly before i'd have to turn individual pages. Even the weight of the binding was memorable.
I found I could learn more from books that had heavy covers, and glossy pages for easy turing, layots that were generous not compact with lots of color and visual reminders.
Thus to me a pdf file of a book on the screen or a Kindle are just viscerally anti-cognative even though the information might be identical.
The visceral nature of a book in not replicated on laser printed and bound paper. It just does not flip right for me.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No, really, why was the parent modded funny? It is true: textbook publishers routinely release "new editions" of books where only practice problems and page numbers have been changed, to try and force students to buy new books instead of used books. I've seen error that persist in edition after edition, or books where the problems themselves weren't even changed -- just the order and numbering of the problems. It is a disgrace, especially when professors go along with it (sometimes the professors are even collecting royalties from the books in question).
Palm trees and 8
Sad isn't it?
For 99% of the courses, 99.9% of the material will NOT change from year to year.
Yet the textbooks are re-released almost every year.
Now, the only downsides I see to having Free (as in Freedom) textbooks available in digital form are:
#1. The answers to the exercises WILL be available on-line. So? If the instructor cannot come up with his/her own exercises then s/he needs to find a new job.
#2. Printing on a laser printer is more expensive than in a print shop. But if students only print out the exercises, they save paper anyway.
Any others?
Hah, that will not happen.
They will offer them with some crazy Windows Vista only DRM, priced the exact same as the printed book, and then use the complete lack of sales as a "see, people don't want e-book versions" example.
(I really wish I was being a bit too pessimistic there, but...)
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I'm sorry but I can't sit and watch liberals destroy themselves in the pursuit of free works.
Its one thing that the likes of any number of political musicians might suddenly find themselves without a fat paycheck once CD sales approach zero, its quite another when the very academic backbone on the country is assaulted.
It takes an enormous amount of work to make a good academic text. You can't just learn something like physics by skimming a few blog quotes, or get a real sense of any field, for that matter, by reading books. Is it unfortunate that they cost a lot? Yes, it is. But books have always been historically valuable things and the bulk of that value has been in the content.
I've read MIT Open Courseware and a lot of it actually is not that deep. A few syllabi and class notes and homework assignments is not the same as the book the class refers to!
Textbook authors deserve to be paid. If you have a society where authors do not get paid, you basically wipe out the entire academic basis of learning in the USA, and with it, our country. People's quests for knowledge about the world will not go away when you get rid of books, and, instead of books, they will have their heads filled with muddy, wrong and incorrect web sites all measured more by how many clicks they get from adsense than any real academic measure of the value of the work.
Indeed, there's a lot of that already.
But hey, if all of these professors want to work for free... they are more than welcome to it, but I guarantee them this - preachers -never- work for free, and, if people want to screw over universities because they don't want to pay their authors, then, we'll wind up reverting back to a medieval society.
This is my sig.
A note on the 2nd trick. You have to be of greater than a certain intelligence. I used a Chem book 2-3 editions old for Chem I/II (It's freaking chemistry...). I couldn't use any of the "Turn to page XXXX" instructions. Homework never came from the book (there was no homework).
Worst case was they re arranged the chapters. Chapter 4: Reactions was now Chapter 14: Reactions. You have to be smart enough to know how to use a table of contents. I suggested this to my brother (freshmen last year) and it was lost on him. He broke down and ended up buying a book.
One more:
Buy from Half.com EARLY. Most large schools will post their required books before the end of the previous semester. Now is prime time to be shopping. You'll have them for the first day of school and know well ahead of time if they'll work.
Last resort:
For all my engineering books the Engineering Library kept 2 copies at all times that you could not check out. If you're waiting on a book or really want to kill time, you can live in the library to do your homework. If nothing else, just copy the problems out of it every few weeks and use your 'useless' copy as reference.
Finally, Engineers, keep your books. I wish I did. I can't name the times I've needed flow equations, thermo, controls, etc. Sure most of it is on wiki, but it's not in the format that you learned it. Unless you go straight into marketing or something, you're probably going to use something at least once.
If you guys start stealing text books too just keep in mind that its the lthe little guys who will suffer like the unions who man the presses and the shmoos like me who are paid to put the book together.
Wow. Robots have actually unionized?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
In a way, political and legal earthquakes and mob burnings of free information sites are serving to strengthen the integrity and resiliency of a fast evolving Library of Alexandria, even if it is not yet labeled as such. One day such a data repository may also very well fit onto a key chain sized flash drive.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
When returning books: Find the UPC of the "New" edition, slap it on your old edition and return it. Do it during the highest rush when the checkers in are just trying to get through everyone. I think I would net around $100 a semester buying $5 books and returning them for $30. Screw you book store.
Don't you mean "Screw you poor student who later bought this book and didn't realize the problem until it's too late"?
My father in law wrote a fundamentals of electronics & electricity textbook used at community college/ITT Tech kinds of schools. He is currently doing a rewrite of the textbook and has been for over year. Mind you, he has a BS & MS in Engineering and a PhD in Education and has real work to be doing as he holds a full time job at 70 in industry. Students would not be served by teaching this subject from material approaching 10 years in age, so every 6-7 years he puts in a couple hundred man hours of time outside his normal work to perform what is essentially a rewrite of the entire book. He will update the graphics, restructure text and create pdf chapter reviews and his basement is lined with stacks of chapters each with piles for submitted, edited, reviewed and accepted with source references and artwork. As a former professor, he feels an obligation to do right by the students but if the book is pirated you can be certain he'll throw in the towel and let someone else write it. Eventually students are going to suffer because none of the people who should be writing books like this will because it isn't worth it anymore.
You're handing out/falling for the same mahooah that the RIAA/MPAA crowd have been pushing for years. The percentage of book revenues that goes to folks who physically create the books is paltry indeed. If you want to look at who is endangering your job, look to the big publishers who are increasingly moving their production to China and friends, just like every other large corporation.
Me? I'm buying my own HP 8100's, my own heavy duty binder and laminator, my own trimmer, etc. and plan to shift all of my production except for large posters and some letterpress inhouse within two years, at most. And since I won't be giving so much of my money to jobbers, I'll be all the better positioned to A.) do short runs at much lower capital investment, B.) shift to tree-free paper and other resources the large, commodity printers don't want to be bothered with, C.) produce books with unusual formats, ink, etc.
In an age of print-on-demand and ever more standardized products from the ever more consolidated megapublishers, it's more important than ever to pay attention to these things. Their stuff may be getting more and more plasticized. My stuff will be getting less and less so. And from the feedback I'm getting so far, customers love this kind of customization and attention to detail, including people in the educational market. I've been speaking to some schools who are quite interested in having some input in what they use without having to pay or charge their students an arm and a leg.
Oh, and fwiw, I think that you mean "shmoes". Unless, that is, you're a gelatinous white blog that without limbs that can't speak.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
At least, the paper version is inherently DRM-free.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
that's what exam boards are for:
"Why does your class have a 90% fail rate?"
"I insta-fail anyone who doesn't buy my textbook"
"Erm, right. We're giving everyone a concessionary pass and giving this module to someone else next year."
OTOH, this is my 4th year in taught academia, and I have only just come across a lecturer who directly set questions from a textbook - I always used to chuckle when I saw references to textbook exercises being used directly. If you get to give feedback at the end of the module - make sure that everyone complains about being forced to buy the textbook. During the term, make sure to complain to anyone within earshot about it too.
FGD 135
Um, considering what a semester hour costs shouldn't the professor pick the *best* book not the cheapest. If a professor is handicapped by a poor book then you're not going to get a lot of value for your money and time invested in the course. Of course the best textbook might be no textbook at all, but that's a separate argument/discussion.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I had a Discrete Mathematics professor who did the same thing.
From TFA:
"It is troubling that there is a culture of infringement out there,"
It is more troubling that there is a culture of printing on dead trees with the explicit intent of making them obsolete before the ink dries to sell more of them.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Nowadays, most profs aren't allowed (by either law, Board of Regents ethics codes, or by school policy) to require their own authored textbooks for taking their own classes.
[Citation Needed]
I took a course that used the prof's text book. The dept and/or university required him to donate the equivalent he would get in royalties. He was allowed to do this.
In my current university in a different state, another professor uses his own book as a textbook. Don't know if he has to donate anything or not, but he's been doing it for decades now.
Beetle B.
(Quote from end of article)
He said that if the problem worsens, publishers may have to take other steps to prevent piracy, such as releasing a new version of most textbooks every semester. The versions could include slight modifications that could be changed easily--such as altering the numbers in math problems.
"They may be compelled to," he said, "in order to stay one step ahead of the pirates."
(End quote)
Copying of anything gets easier and easier. Actions such as this may even encourage the development of a underground 'industry', that copies books and sells them in some form on the Web, or just torrents them. One of the key problems people have with these publishers, is their re-arrangement of material at an inflated price, just to be able to sell a new edition every year. Have they ever heard of releasing a supplement, with the new material? A complete new version every semester will just give them another reason to copy or download their books, vs buying a new copy. They really need to look at the recording industry model, and see how 'gouging' the customer on price at every opportunity is not how to sell more copies, and how new distribution methods such as E-Books (or equivalent) could make money for them, too.
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
Any reasonably intelligent student who is shelling out their own money, and not daddy's bankroll, will triple check the title, edition, and authors of any textbook they buy.